America's Industrial Revolution had barely begun while the secret, underground stateless nation of vampires are in need of their own--organised into a caste system based on birth or creation, any other means of becoming such is killed for being an abomination.
The child factory worker Jer Underwood is isolated from other vampires for reasons he was still too young to understand. After escaping an assassination attempt, put on his family for reasons he didn't understand, he is orphaned and left to unveil the truth for himself.
The more he understands and discovers, the more he wants to stop the ones enforcing the caste system. To understand how to stop the ones enforcing the caste and reveal the true biological structure of the vampire species, he has no other way than to leave a trail of blood and murders that leads those in charge to a wanted man--a possible leak in the truth.