“Sod off, I said!”

He stood there in the center of the living room, doing what

appeared to be a bizarre little two-step shuffle; one step forward,

two steps back, two steps forward, one step back…

“Get out of it, ya bleedin‘ wanker! Lemme go!”

“That’s a catchy step, ” said a voice from behind him. “But I

suspect it would work better with music.”

Billy turned to see Modred leaning against the door frame of his

bedroom. The last survivor of Camelot was dressed in black silk

pajamas and a black silk robe, both exquisitely tailored. He was

wearing tinted, gold-rimmed aviator glasses, his blond hair was

combed back at the sides, and his beard was neatly trimmed. He

appeared to be in his forties, but was in fact several thousand years

older, the bastard son of King Arthur Pendragon and his half-sister,

the sorceress, Morgan Le Fay. Like Merlin, he had the blood of the

immortal Old Ones flowing through his veins, but singe he was part

human, he would not live forever. He aged, although at a rate far

slower than ordinary men.

“Now see what you’ve done?” said Merlin. “I told you to keep your

voice down!”

“Don’t blame the boy, Ambrosius, ” said Modred, coming into the

room. “I was awake already. ” He went over to the bar and poured

himself and Billy a couple of Scotches. Giving booze to a minor was

the least of his long list of sins, though Billy had been drinking hard

liquor since he was ten. “I had a rather unsettling nightmare.”

“About giant snakes?” said Kira. She and Wyrdrune came out of

their bedroom into the living room of the penthouse they all shared,

on the Upper West Side of New York, overlooking Central Park.

Modred glanced at her sharply.

She was slim and feral pretty, with dark eyes and jet-black hair

worn short, in a geometric style, swept back at the sides and down

over her forehead in the front. She was barefoot and dressed only in

panties and a dark blue T-shirt.

“We both had the same dream, ” said Wyrdrune.

He had thrown on a blue terry-cloth bathrobe. His dusty blond