Blood was at the large bay window, looking out. "Are we in Whitechapel?" he

said

in a bewildered tone. "Where the hell are we?"

"Here, son, have a drink," said Makepeace, handing Blood his own half-empty

bottle of Scotch, which he had managed to snatch just before they were

teleported from Blood's office.

"How did this happen?" Wyrdrune asked Merlin. "How did you wind up... like

this?

We saw you die!"

"Good question," Merlin said. "I puzzled over that one for quite a while

myself,

until it occurred to me to search through Billy's unconscious racial memory.

Not

an easy thing to do, by the way. And there were some truly ugly things in

there.

Small wonder he turned out the way he did. He's basically a good-hearted kid,

but boy, does he have rotten genes." Merlin sighed. "He's descended from me,

God

help the poor little bastard."

"From you?" said Wyrdrune. "But I thought you never had any children!"

"So did I," said Merlin. "However, after that little witch Nimue took

advantage

of my midlife crisis, it seems she became pregnant with my child. Billy is

the

last link in a long chain of miscreants that stretches back throughout the

ages,

featuring such dubious luminaries as Michel de Nostre-Dame, who was better

known

as Nostradamus, and that old reprobate, Giuseppe Balsamo, alias Count

Alessandro

di Cagliostro. And there were some other notable offshoots of the family tree

that would best go unmentioned. Billy is apparently the last one left, my

only

living descendant. The lad may not be much, but it seems he's all I've got."

"So you became reincarnated as your own lineal descendant!" Wyrdrune said.

"My spirit still had work to do," said Merlin. "And I suppose it gravitated

to

the only body whose genetic makeup would provide the necessary compatibility.

An

ordinary human body simply wouldn't do, you see. I needed a body that was

extraordinary." He cast a disapproving glance down at Billy's fringed leather

patchwork wardrobe. "Although this is rather stretching the point a bit."

"So is calling your resurgence a reincarnation, if you ask me," said

Makepeace.

"If that's what you believe, then you're just bullshitting yourself."

"What do you mean?" said Merlin. "What the devil are you talking about?"

"I mean that you're just playing at semantics, Ambrosius," Makepeace said.

"Reincarnation, properly speaking, means to be reborn in another body. But

you