Thea Harrison: True Colors

“I want you to tell me everything that’s happened to you over the last couple of days,” Gideon said. “Take your time, and don’t worry about whether you think it’s important or not. I’ll decide if it is.”

“Everything?” She regarded him in puzzlement. “You’re not going to ask me questions?”

“You mean like in a TV show, where the cops get what they need to know in three or four minutes of directed dialogue?” Warmth touched her cheeks and she lifted one shoulder sheepishly. He gave her a faint smile. “I’ll ask questions later. Right now, I don’t want to lead you or impose my agenda or opinions on you. There’s always the possibility that you know more than you think you do, and things that I can’t know to ask about yet.”

“Okay.” She sipped her tea to take a moment and collect her thoughts. Not half an hour ago she had been a terrified, all but incoherent wreck. Now she was certainly grieving, but she felt calmer, supported, no longer alone and vulnerable in the dark.

She felt safe.

She thought back a few days ago to how different life had been when she had gone blithely to work without a clue what horrors the week would hold. “I’m a teacher,” she said. “I work at a private elementary school, Broadway Elementary. Haley worked at the same school. The principal, Alex Schaffer, is a friend of ours. At lunchtime he came to tell us that a mutual friend of ours, Peter Brunswick, was dead.”

At first the words came slow and halting. Then they sped up and came fast and hard. Gideon remained a silent listener, his steady gaze and strong, sure presence a lifeline she could hold on to when she hit the rough bits.

She cried. She didn’t want to but she couldn’t help it. When she reached the point where she had looked on Haley’s poor, violated body for the first time, she took off her glasses and covered her eyes with one hand as tears streaked down her face.

Gideon’s chair scraped the floor. He came around the table, knelt beside her and pulled her into his arms. It felt like it had the first time, a sense of not just being hugged but enfolded.

Neither one of them remarked on the fact that, as a police officer questioning a potential witness, many people would say his actions were inappropriate. He had crossed that line already outside the precinct.

Alice gave herself a gift—she let herself do what she needed to. She wrapped her arms around him, tucked her face into his sturdy neck, and sobbed her heart out.

He rubbed her back and held her with immaculate patience, only loosening his hold when she had calmed and made as if to straighten. He asked in a quiet voice, “Better?”

She nodded and touched the back of his hand in thanks. Then she collected her glasses and stood to splash her face off at the kitchen sink. The cool water felt good against her over-hot, puffy skin. She patted her face dry on a towel and slipped her glasses back on her nose. As the world came back into focus, she noticed the clock built into her stove read 9:05 pm.

She looked at Gideon who had risen to his feet. Every time she laid eyes on him, the sheer size of him came as shock. Neither of them had had any chance to get supper that evening. He hadn’t even started to ask her questions, so he wouldn’t be leaving any time soon. She didn’t think she could handle food, but large male Wyr, especially those with his kind of intense physicality, needed to eat.

“Are you hungry?” she asked.

He froze. She could tell he was trying to decide what would be the right thing to say and, unbelievably on such a horrible night, her lips curved into a real smile.

“Of course you’re hungry,” she said. “I’ll fix something to eat.”

“You don’t have to do that,” Gideon told her.

“I know, but I want to,” she replied. “I like to cook when I’m stressed.” His eyebrows rose. She chuckled a little. “I guess that might sound strange, but cooking calms me down. I find it comforting.”

“As long as you’re sure,” he said cautiously. “I could eat something.”

Given the care with which he was treating her, no doubt that meant he was famished, so whatever she made would have to be hearty. She was glad she had gone to the store to stock up on supplies when she heard the forecast for the winter storm.

She opened the fridge, pulled out a Corona and handed it to him. He took it, his eyes lit with a tentative gratitude. Good heavens, he looked like nobody had offered to feed him before. She turned back to assess the contents of her fridge as she tried to decide what to make. “You’re a canine of some sort, aren’t you?” she murmured. He would want a lot of protein.

“I’m a wolf,” he said.

She paused as she absorbed that. A wolf, not a dog, which meant he was not quite tame or domesticated. Yes, that fit. He would be breathtaking as a wolf if his fur was the same white-blond as his hair.

“And you’re a rainbow chameleon, right?” he asked.

The handle of the fridge door slipped out of her nerveless fingers. The door swung wide as she turned to face him and backed against a counter.

Gideon’s expression changed. He said in a calm voice, “Alice, it’s all right. Remember, you’re quite safe.”

Again, he played it to perfection. He didn’t physically advance but instead leaned back against the dining table, his massive body relaxed, one foot kicked over the other. He regarded her with the same steady calm he had shown her all evening.

She relaxed with a self-conscious laugh. “I’m sorry,” she said. “That felt like it came out of nowhere, and—we don’t like to talk about ourselves or advertise what kind of Wyr we are, you know. Some of that’s instinctive behavior, and some of it’s… Well…” She made an all-encompassing gesture.

He nodded and rubbed the back of his head, looking thoughtful. “History has not been kind to the chameleon Wyr.”

Like most of the Elder Races, Wyrkind were not only from earth. Some of the stranger species were native to the Other lands, those magic-filled places that had been formed when time and space buckled at the earth’s formation. Rainbow chameleons were such Wyr. Rare, shy creatures, they came from a remote Other land connected to the Amazon rainforest.

Rainbow chameleons had no non-Wyr counterpart. They were also unique among other, mundane species of chameleons that typically could make only a few changes in color. Rainbow chameleons had the ability to change into any color and could do so at will to blend into their surroundings.

One of the earliest explorers of the Amazon inland, Spanish conquistador Francisco de Orellana, made the first known European contact with rainbow chameleon Wyr in early 1542 as he traveled the length of the Amazon River and searched for the mythical city of El Dorado. Upon discovering the rainbow chameleon’s unique ability to undergo radical and complex changes in color, Orellana proceeded to commit some of the greatest atrocities in either Spanish or Elder Races history. He systematically hunted chameleon Wyr and had them dissected in an attempt to discover the source of their ability. The exact number of Wyr he murdered was unknown, but historians estimated the total to be anywhere from 3,000 to as many as 5,000, which were catastrophic numbers for such a rare species.

In his experiments, Orellana discovered the chameleon Wyr had a gland similar to the human pituitary gland. Extractions produced a fluid that, when it was used to treat textiles, could produce an arresting effect on items of clothing. Orellana never found El Dorado, but he brought vials of the chameleon extract back to Spain that he sold for a king’s ransom while keeping secret its origins. Spanish royalty and a few certain wealthy nobles flaunted elaborate court attire made of fabulous cloths that changed colors with liquid fluidity to match their surroundings.