San Francisco of the 20th-something century. The Nth revival of disco fashion imported from across the Pacific, shining hovercars made in Baghdad bought by the wealthy, anti-Darkling propaganda picked up off satellite from European stations, no one cared: in America horror was still in. They called them Darkling now, a long ago misunderstood play on an everyday term of affection had all humans thinking those who are different liked to be called Darkling. Of course, in the south there were still those militant groups who knew the word and used it hatefully, and so in those steamy cities those who would be called Darkling whispered to each other in their clandestine meeting places, "Dar-ling, I am the very limit of differentness." But in San Francisco, they had no trouble. California had always loved the Darkling, Vampyres especially, or so it seemed then to people living there.

San Francisco exported great gothic horror to the rest of the world, independent music labels, a small population of very talented writers, several hit TV shows, and, most importantly, it was the home of GothWorld. Happy mice forgotten, everyone wanted a figure of Crowley the skeleton that they could bend and torture in so many ways, preferably one that came with Crowley's cousin Raym T. Raven, Prince of Hell and Portent of Evil. Every kid wanted to have the next Raym poster or the next Raym bedsheets, the next Raym studded collar. And the children never had to worry about the teenagers teasing them, because the teenagers loved Raym and Crowley too!

The park itself was a short monorail ride from the city, just a couple hours from LA on the same train system. Its artfully designed facades changed style as one walked through the park. Real working gaslamps, false Victorian storefronts, and fog in London After Midnight; everything crooked and colorful in the Neither World, In Neverland there were mirrors down beneath the feet and clubs were filled with dancers all night long. GothWorld didn't close at Night, only for several hours each morning to make repairs and tidy up.

And hidden away in some office in San Francisco office, men, women, and Vampyres with money said: Put Raym in a movie, make bigger bendable Crowleys, design a female GothWorld character!

She was in the planning.

Even on the worst days of the year, GothWorld was open, and crowded. On the worst days, the guests shelled out money for large black and white spiraled umbrellas, or purple ones with dangling Raym's at each spoke, to walk the streets all named after famous horror writers. The raven with the star in his eye was America's anti-idol. "He's so evil, he's so smart, he despises people of all colors and creeds with equanimity." And, everyone loved poor put-upon and clumsy Crowley, with his tough biker boots and spiked collar.

When GothWorld first opened, they got the group Velvet to play in the clubs, but with being world leaders and all, the members couldn't hack it, so the money makers signed a contract with Velvet herself, and got permission for a cover artist to perform her songs and wear her trademark black velvet dresses. The name she went by was Cinnamon and she had been discovered in a tiny club in Karachi by Morpheus. He had connections with the money makers.

Cinnamon, who's real name was Jaya Tagore, played three shows a day, more during some seasons, always at the Neverland club they called Usher House. Every so often, they'd get another act or two, that was good. So, when Opium planned her solo release and signed up to play at GothWorld a while, Cinnamon was ecstatic. To think, the Darkling who had spawned dear sweet Morpheus would share the stage, the Darkling who was known to the world as the lead singer of Robert's Pill, the group Morpheus had played guitar for.

Cinnamon was used to Darkling; she had seen the Brits try to push them out of England. Cinnamon's family had moved to Pakistan. Karachi was what they called a Haven city; it was host to one of the seven Havens the Darkling had held from the time before the Union. So, as soon as Cinnamon had moved there, she met Morpheus. She still thought he was sweet. But, the new gig meant she had to put up with Vampyres slipping backstage, past security, to lick their lips and say, "You almost look like Joy."

She kept saying they should get some Halfangels as security.

But, she knew the Vampyres couldn't hurt her. The United States of North America was part of the Union of Darkland Nations; there was one set of laws for all. You couldn't murder. Most of the Darkling didn't seem to care, when they could buy blood in every grocery and drug store; even some of the newsstands sold it, along with the soda in their small refrigerators.

Cinnamon came in through the back entrance in her plain clothes. She screwed open a small Coca-Cola bottle, as she sat down. Opium was sitting before the mirror, on the dressing table. She'd added a white streak to her hair; it looked sinister horror! She said she expected Morpheus to visit soon, and looked to the glass over her shoulder. She said she had seen Joy out in the audience.

"She's here?" Cinnamon had asked with shock.

Cinnamon hurried to get dressed, standing at the wardrobe racks fastening a black corset with velvet cups. She wasn't as well endowed as the real Velvet, but no one seemed to care. It was the general build of the body, the Anglo-Indian features that somehow matched those of Velvet, most of all it was the way she moved when she was out there, and the fact that her voice was as good naturally as Velvet's was after the blood.

Someone came to the door. He was a pretty boy, tall, slender, blond...he had amazing dark-blue eyes, and features she couldn't quite place. Opium knew him. She explained very quickly that this was Joy's recent boy, implying there had been many others before him. Opium called the boy John.

John said, just like everyone did, that Cinnamon looked just like Joy, and just like everyone, he said when she'd thanked him, "What sort of accent is that?"

There was hardly time to shove her legs into fishnets, pull on a tulle skirt and ankle boots and run out to the stage.

Opium looked over her shoulder.

John began talking at her. He was afraid of her, obviously. That meant he knew what her ability was. John knew that, if he looked her in the eyes too long, he'd see himself the way he really looked, whether he was ready or not.

Opium calmed him down.

John stood there and told Opium that he had been in New Orleans when Joy had had another of her strange fits, her spells. Her Claire's Horrors, as Athen had always called them, though John didn't say this. He stood there and accused Opium of knowing all about Joy, that there was this strange maybe imaginary Daniel she kept looking for and there was a brother, Mandy or something like that. He accused Opium of refusing to help her friend, her friend whom was slowly going mad.

The boy knew an awful lot, of course he explained he'd only put this all together lately, and that some of it Opium and Morpheus had told him themselves when they appeared in his dream.

Opium glanced over her shoulder.

Opium sighed. She let John know what parts he'd gotten right. She said there was nothing she could do about it, not right now, but maybe sometime Joy could know what she was, maybe. In the meantime, since John knew so much of it, he ought to guard her, to make sure she never got so close to her twin again, or that something bad came of it.

She looked at John. It was not his real name. It was the name Joy had given him, which Opium thought strange considering his real name was Danjel Weiss-Poznanski; Joy was usually predisposed to all Daniels. Opium didn't hurt him, didn't hold his gaze. She just told him he'd better get back to Joy.

Morpheus appeared at his mother's side. "Another Daniel?" he said.

"World's full of them," Mother said.

"Should I have known him?"

"If you don't, you will," said Mother. "Where are you headed now?"

"To meet you back in New Orleans."

His mother nodded, "Yes. You were distracted from it enough?"

"Yeah, I guess, gotta go back sometime, right?"

Again, she nodded.

"I like the streak," Morpheus said, and then he left.

His orchid was waiting in its glass pitcher when Morpheus got to the house in New Orleans, drooping. "They never last long," he said.

"Because you cut them from the vine," said Mother. Morpheus could see she was trying to come up with an interesting analogy. "Cutting the blossom from the vine is like cutting off Joey Lawrence's hair...or something."

Morpheus laughed. He was certain Joe had eventually cut the hair.

Mother frowned and was silent.

"Opium, I keep hearing that Shade is a great world leader...but the Redjacks chased him out of New York, and we've learned the hunts continue."

"Perhaps, if things continue along a certain path he will be one...or you could have happened upon a Might Have Been."

Morpheus nodded. He liked Might Have Beens, they were a lot like dreams, good or bad. "But they had this great-"

"Don't tell me more than I know, Murph, please." The temporal mechanics were difficult for her. Even Morpheus didn't understand some of the laws, he just kinda knew how to travel time without getting confused. "Things are going to happen here soon. Ah, don't try to interrupt again, Murph...you'll just know."

Even though the ability to travel across time was natural to Morpheus, and he didn't suffer shock from jumps back and forth or meeting potential versions of others, there were still times when it took a lot of effort to place what he had witnessed in context of a linear timeline that he could explain to others. He had seen the distant past of the inhuman creatures of Earth, and he had seen a time that might yet be, when those same creatures would rule over the planet, and live peacefully with Humans. But, now, he was back in a time where he might be hunted on the basis of his genetic code, and he was not sure how they got to that potential future of co-existance or even if they definitely would.

But, the potential remained. He could see the percentage of possibilities shifting. Morpheus hoped, somehow, they could reach one of those futures, though it might mean greater hardship would come to them first.

America had become so suspicious of both terrorists and non-humans - one more overtly than than the other - they had tightened control on immigration, they made regular computer sweeps of governemnt databases, they compared death records to tax filings, they monitored shopping patterns and creation of credit accounts. Most people in the country had no idea why this was, though just about every separate subculture and underground organization knew. The best criminal minds were trying to devise a way to get into the actual computers that created account numbers, the systems that checked the other systems. If they could get in at the very core of the processes, they could have completely legal IDs issued to whomever they liked.

But, they were not even close to beating the system, not close at all to beating the sheer numbers of humans against them. This was still just the beginning of the war.

When Joy and Mazaret, still watching each other, came into New Orleans, Morpheus went out to fetch them. He took them to the house where he and Mother were living. At night, they would go out, always together, and they would be very careful to cover things up, if they killed anyone. They let Morpheus do all the shopping, because he had the most ways of getting things without having to pay for them. If they were quite desperate for something, and the store was rigged, so that no one could leave without paying, he'd just go in, take something, and teleport out. That always confused people.

As more time passed, more and more of the non-humans wandered south away from the serious hunters. They came east from California, they came up from Mexico, they came from New York in droves. They came from airports in DC and Miami, they came from everywhere. Where there were numbers they felt drawn. They sought the safety of numbers, banding together wherever they could.

Eventually, the hunters realized that so many of those they pursued had gone to New Orleans. They'd sweep the city every so often, but mainly they hunted in the swamps and in the water. They didn't want to alert too many Humans, and there were quite a lot of non-humans who had thought hiding in the swamps a good idea.

There were a small group of them living in the apartment, Opium and Morpheus, of course, Joy and Mazaret, and then a very very tall man who had recognized Opium on the street. The giant was Gregory, and he had known Opium long ago in Scotland. There was a Quatangel named Spider, who had come down from New York saying that he knew Steven Jewel. And, there was Alexis who made everyone feel strangely afraid of him, and Crystal who looked almost like a cat, and could drain the strength from a body by touching it.

Joy and Mazaret were in charge, Morpheus and his mother just hung around playing cards and watching. It was Joy and Mazaret who watched each other protectively, and told the others what to do. If some of them needed blood, only one would go out and get it, if they kept themselves alive by draining psychic energy, then perhaps they would get to go out and disable the person the blood would be taken from. Usually, Crystal would go out with either Joy or Mazaret. It wasn't only that she was one of the Weakeners, but that they liked her. Gregory needed looking after, and Alexis frightened people away from him.

It was odd, and yet a happy thing in such a dark time to see Joy act this way. She was so changed from her days spent as Vampyre's love slave or strung out junkie. She was confident, charismatic, charming and she made them all feel joy no matter how terrible things got. Morpheus thought this was what Dream had intended, and there had simply been decades she wasn't in the right place to find those with nobler need of her.

Morpheus wasn't sure she was going to collapse every decade anymore. That had been her program, but she'd died a year before a programmed collapse, and it had been over five years since, already. Vampyre blood was supposed to preserve the body as it was.

This Joy made things better for so many. It was getting so that they were meeting others on the street that begged them for help. They couldn't go out without running into spotlights. It was getting bad everywhere.

There was only one thing to be done, Joy said to them. They must go underground, literally, like she had seen in an old movie. "Forget this thing about the high water table, Joy told the others, with all of us together, there must be a way, if we dig deep enough there must be rock and dry earth, we can keep the water out somehow."

And so they set to work, choosing the location of a cemetery, St. Louis no. 1. And they chose a place to dig, one that could be hidden. They chose a pattern for the tunnels. They got tools. They worked days, knowing the hunters expected them to be out nights. They dug the tunnels, small at first. Dry earth was always pressed against wet earth, they supported the walls with whatever they could find, wood, newspaper, dead bodies.

More and more workers came. They slept huddled underground, not caring that they were dirty or wet because they were not being poked and prodded and drugged. Spider would call many spiders to him and they would do as he said, they would spin and spin, and drink blood and eat insects, and they would spin, millions of them, and they would seal up the walls. Everyone would make like bugs, make cheap concoctions of paste and cement, pick up newspapers, and whole recycling cans, from the streets, and they would build hive-like walls.

More and more would come to them and they would build honeycomb frames of wood or whatever else they had, and they would coat everything with gunk, or glue, or spider silk, or cement. They dug sinkholes every so often, so the water would run down inside, and knowing these would work as booby-traps.

No one cared that this was taking a long time. They were living down there, then. They would sleep, and then get up again to repair tunnels, or dig new ones. They would set traps. Joy and Mazaret would send out small teams for food. And they never, never brought Human prisoners down to the tunnels, even if the idea of hurting them, or keeping them alive a while longer to get more warm blood was very tempting. A lot of them had seen what Humans did to them. If they were ever going to be free up there, it was not going to be in a world where they simply took the Humans' place as oppressors.