Preobrazhensky wiped tears from his eyes as blood began to drip from the faucet.

– – –

The water treatment facility was abuzz with engineers and excitement on this cold Moscow morning. The counter-revolutionaries had held it for months, imbuing it with a defiant symbolism which their defeat had so beautifully transformed into a symbol of victory for the revolution. All eyes were on the work being done here, and that work was progressing.

Already, undesirable elements (bourgeoisie, intellectuals, kulaks) were being rounded up, and the bleeding chambers had been constructed and fitted into the existing infrastructure. In essence, the plant’s inputs were being switched. As trumpeted by official propaganda, yesterday’s enemies would become tomorrow’s lifeblood—literally: entire masses kept like cattle, given just enough nourishment to keep them alive so that their treacherous hearts could pump blood for the world’s first vampiric state, The Union of Vampire Socialist Republics.

Moscow’s would be first of hundreds of such facilities. The model on which the success of the others would depend.

The revolution had promised the flow of blood.

The revolution must deliver.

Preobrazhensky knew that what this really meant was that he, newly-appointed Minister of Hemo- and Agriculture, must deliver.

He passed a group of huddled undesirables, fresh off one of the eastern trains, and felt a pang of sympathy—but only a pang. These were the same savages who for centuries had hunted and killed his species. So many stabbings; so much hatred. As a filthy boy reached for his overcoat, Preobrazhensky forced himself to see the child solely as blood-potential. The younger, the better, Preobrazhensky reminded himself. The revolution demands an iron will.

– – –

St. Petersburg’s Winter Palace was cacophonous. A multitude of exhilarated voices speaking hurriedly and at once over a faint but violent backdrop of gunfire and explosions. Hopes and dreams mixed with practical realities and intra-party ideological disputes about some obscure aspect of vampirosocialism. Then Lenin, unfanged as was now the custom, called order for roll call. Goblets of blood circulated and one-by-one the names were read: Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Bukharin, Stalin, Preobrazhensky…

The civil war was present too, but everyone agreed the Reds were winning, and it was time to formally announce the revolutionary state. After weeks of negotiations, the outline was clear. The vampires had reached agreement with the urban proletariat (small enough to be pummeled into obedience) and non-kulak peasantry (hungry and fearful) to enslave and liquidate the remaining classes.

The humans would be allowed autonomous republics, but to the vampires would go the cities and, through their dominance in the Party, the economy, foreign policy, army and police. The vampires would thereby control all internal and external state policies. Although they were a minority, they were an ancient, well-organized one, and every day their ranks swelled.

Foreign vampires crossed the border en masse to join the Motherland of World Vampirism.

– – –

Preobrazhensky watched Lenin ascend the platform, reveal his fangs and address the gathering crowd. After he finished—

“Peace! Land! Blood!” they chanted.

The revolution had begun.