Something was wrong with the eyes, too. They weren't the cool, clear grey that I remembered.

Celeste laughed softly.

But even as she did so, her face began to twist, to change. The features seemed to run together in an incredible distortion.

I tried to thrust her away from me, then.

Like magic, the warm arms twined about my neck reshaped and elongated. Before my eyes, the fleshtones were transformed to grey-green mottling.

Woman into Kel; Kel into woman. The end of an idyll.

I began to laugh ... louder and louder; more and more wildly. When one of the two-headed men tried to shake me, I spat in his face.

Furiously, he lashed out at me with the barrel of his paragun.

I didn't even try to dodge the blow....