Blood Double (God Wars #1)(39)
"I'm sorry I woke you," I apologized, blinking in the light on that half of the planet. It never really went dark there, and I wondered how Corent managed to sleep at all.
"I do not mind," Corent smiled and leaned against the same tree. I'd chosen an oak tree outside his grove, hoping I wouldn't disturb anybody.
"I took your advice," I said. "I managed to turn to mist. Apparently, I can fold space, too. I wonder what else I can do, now," I sighed.
"Have you ever seen the cities on your own?"
"I haven't seen much of anything here, unless I was accompanied by a grumpy vampire."
"I don't go often, but I have visited. Visitors tend to stare at my hair."
"That's too bad. Do you ever wear hats?"
"Seldom. They interfere with my weather senses."
"What do you like best about visiting the cities?"
"The ice-cream shops. There are two—one in Casino City and another in Sun City."
"I love ice cream." I leaned back against the tree trunk and closed my eyes with a sigh. I'd gotten precious little ice cream in my life.
"Change your face and come with me." Why hadn't I thought of that before? I did it easily, and Corent smiled when I was finished—I wore my own face. Corent rose, took my hand and lifted me. I blinked in surprise as he folded me to Casino City, then shrugged my shoulders and made a mental note for myself as we walked into Niff's Ice Cream Shop.
Chapter 9
Kay's Journal
I'd expected someone before this. Perhaps it was an oversight or an attempt to give me a false sense of security before death came in the form of a paid assassin. Did they think I wouldn't recognize this one? I did. Rezil Foculis stood amid displays of fruit and vegetables in the all-night market, as out of place as a vampire in morning sunlight. Dressed expensively in dark clothing, Rezil might have been a vampire or any one of the creatures that only haunted nights as he shifted his balance, pretending to examine the small, tastefully stacked pile of gishi fruit.
Gishi fruit, fresh and in season, had brought me out of my small condo for the evening—the expensive, pear-shaped dark-green fruit that sold for thirty-six Alliance credits each and was as close to a taste of the afterlife as I was ever likely to get. One fruit was all my budget would allow per moon-turn; my deceased husband's gambling debts saw to that. Cull Sollo had been born with a gambling problem, I think.
His death and my disobedience afterward precipitated this visit by an assassin, who as yet hadn't caught sight of me. If he had, I'd be bleeding out my last on the tiled floor of a small, twenty-eight-hour, eight-day shop in Campiaa City, the seat of the Campiaan Alliance.
Rezil, who hadn't caught sight of me, also didn't see as I slipped out the door with a harried mother and her crying child. Rezil had no patience for children, crying or otherwise, so we were ignored.
Separating myself from the mother and child, I slipped into deeper shadows surrounding the small business. Farther down the street, the lights of Campiaa City and all its gleaming casinos lined a strip of sand that ran along the curving half-moon of Campiaa Bay. This had been heaven for Cull, so he'd bought a small condo within walking distance of his favorite gambling establishments. Campiaa City was where he'd spent the last nine years of his life, gambling heavily and racking up debt eight of those years.
His age, disease, drinking and eating habits had finally caught up with him, after he'd refused to seek medical treatment many times. Heart failure was the final diagnosis when the medics hauled his body away from our fourth-floor apartment. That was six moon-turns past. When I failed to report my husband's death to Cull's cousin, and then refused to ask him to send someone to collect me, Rezil had appeared.
Will you think it strange that I argued with myself every step of the distance between the grocery and my condo? I did. No one else I'd ever met had two perfectly preserved sets of memories inside their heads. I did. One set was more horrible than the other, with neither being anything close to pleasant. The younger, darker mindset fought to convince the older, more reasonable mindset to end it all.
I had the means—a bottle of medication that Cull had obtained through less than legitimate channels. A handful of small tablets was all it would take and everything would be over for me. This time, a remaining spark of hope and the older, more reasonable voice won.
*
Later, I used my comp-vid to buy two tickets for passage away from Campiaa. Yes, it was perfectly ironic and on a better day, I might have laughed over the whole thing. Instead, I focused on saving my life and took no time to dwell on anything as frivolous as laughter. A bag was packed and waiting while I carefully attached the fabricated gel cheeks and chin, making my face rounded and chubby.
Already dressed in padded clothing several sizes too large for my small frame, I slipped a mousy-blonde wig over my head and surveyed the results. My appearance matched the ID chip embedded in the bracelet I now wore on my right wrist—my actual identifying chip was beneath the skin on my left.
What might save me was the fact that the Campiaan Alliance was still in its infancy and relatively new to Alliance identification. Barely forty-three sun-turns old, authorities were grateful if its citizens had any sort of ID. All I had to do was rake my braceleted right wrist over the scanner, match the photograph that popped up and through the security gate I'd go. It was the only way I might live past the following day.