A/N: Yes, yes, I know. I owe chapters on other stories, blah, blah, blah. When the vamp!bunnies strike, I am helpless under their command. This is a setup chapter to give an overview of the world I'm in the process of creating. Enjoy! Review! Happy New Year to You!
Prelude to a New World
It shouldn't have been possible for so small a number to suddenly be ruling the world, but the Vampires had been smart...and patient. They'd spent the better part of the 20th century carefully setting things up for what would be known as the Great Takeover, with the final push coming during the decade between 1990 and the year 2000.
Vampires were by nature long-term planners. Slowly but surely they began Turning rich and powerful families, so that by the time they were poised for their eventual takeover of the world they'd nearly doubled their numbers.
When 1990 was less than twenty-four hours old, the Vampires moved out of stealth mode and began Turning those they deemed most useful to their cause in unprecedented numbers: heads of state and media moguls, wealthy and influential celebrities and CEOs, generals and weapons dealers, over the course of that decade. Even after swelling their ranks with these mass Turnings, they still only numbered in the low millions. Not a huge portion of the population in a world of six billion, but enough to rule. Enough for the have-nots to suddenly find themselves members of a slave race, used as servants and (mostly) unwilling blood donors to the elite, their population strictly, some would say ruthlessly, controlled via means of enforced sterilization for those deemed less than useful in the new world order, and enforced birth control of a more temporary nature for those who would eventually be permitted to parent the next generation of slaves and potential Turned.
The takeover itself was relatively peaceful, starting as it did from the top; the immediate aftermath, however, proved to be a horrific affair, with wars, famine, pestilence, all being wielded by the world's new Vampire masters as tools to reduce the mortal population to something they deemed manageable.
During the course of that chaotic decade, the Vampires exerted many methods of population control in an effort to further reduce the unruly masses of humanity into something they deemed manageable. The chronically ill, the elderly, the infirm, anyone dependent in any way on medication to keep them alive or mentally stable were exterminated with a ruthlessness and even enthusiasm to rival anything the Nazis or Soviets had managed. Students at university level were divided into "useful" and "not" categories. The useful (medical students, science majors, education majors) were allowed to continue their studies. The others (theater majors, soft science majors and the like) were sent to Blood Reservations, which were in the process of being established all over the world for much the same purpose that cattle were herded to the stockyards.
People resisted all this, of course. Students rose up from both groups and were cut down with equal disdain. The military was chaos for a while, with the common soldiers divided almost equally amongst those willing to fight the Vampires and those more concerned with protecting their families or their own selves by siding with what they perceived – correctly, as it turned out – to be the winning side.
By the end of the first decade following the Great Takeover, humanity had lost more than a third of its population, and a "new normal" had uneasily settled into place.
Most children under the age of ten were separated from their parents, to be raised in what amounted to 1984-esque brainwashing and indoctrination centers, where they were taught that the world had been nothing but chaos and desperation before the Great Takeover. That everything was much better once humanity learned its place. Safer. Cleaner. Well-ordered.
Oh, and that their sacred duty was to provide blood for the Masters. Any Master. On demand – unless, of course, they were Marked as belonging to a particular Vampire or their House. And that their full and enthusiastic cooperation would lead to a long life – possibly even to being Turned, if they proved worthy of such an honor – whereas defiance led only to pain and death.
Most children over the age of ten were deemed too old to be properly raised to the new realities of the world and were separated from their parents and forced onto the same reservations as the college students. To the majority of their Vampire masters, their only usefulness ran through their veins.
Few of those children lived to reach the age of eighteen. Intelligence and physical fitness were the only criteria that might spare such a child; if a Master deemed them valuable – and docile – enough, they were brought into a Vampire household and Marked. Any rebelliousness that ensued was punished in only one way: by their immediate death.
There were other exceptions, of course. Children whose parents held valuable skills, who could bargain for their offspring's lives by offering their full and unequivocal cooperation.
Molly Hooper was eleven when the Great Takeover began. Her parents were biochemists, deemed important enough that her life was offered in return for their loyalty to the new Vampire overlords. She was their only child. They were terrified for her life. Of course they cooperated. What loving parent wouldn't?
As a result, she found herself one of the few children of her age allowed to remain with her parents, not shuffled off to a reeducation center or forced into a Blood Reservation. Ten years later, she considered herself lucky to be alive at all. She considered herself even luckier to not be pretty enough to catch the eye of one of the Masters, to be Marked and forced into slavery of a different kind.
As it turned out, the romance novel version of Vampires her mother had once been fond of reading was closest to the truth; they were ruthless killers, yes, Undead in the sense that one had to actually die and rise up again to become a Vampire, but still capable of – and quite interested in – having sex.
No, Molly Hooper was grateful she didn't end up in a Blood Brothel or the mistress of a Vampire who would discard her as soon as another beautiful face caught his eye, or placed in a harem some of the most powerful kept, a stable of women to provide blood and sex and sometimes allowed to give birth to the half-Human, half-Vampire crossbreeds that held their own peculiar status in the new world order – not slaves, not Masters, capable of moving about in the daylight and mostly acting as a sort of warrior/police class, keeping their Vampire forbears safe from the occasional attempt at an uprising.
Because humanity was down, but it never counted itself out. Not even under these horrific circumstances; despots and tyrants had arisen time and again, and time and again people had risen up against them. This time, many of them determined, would be no different.
Especially since there were actually members of the so-called "Master Race" of Vampires who sided with them.
Most importantly, the younger brother of one of the most powerful Turned in London.
Sherlock Holmes.