Teenager Ruslan takes care of the dying old man Tikhon, the village sorcerer who has been healing people all his life. Tikhon dies, and the local priest refuses to conduct the funeral service. Ruslan decides to fix it himself.

Liza is a sophisticated woman who lives in a ‘high class world’. Her husband Peter speaks Russian with a German accent, he owns a chocolate factory. They live in a cold world of minimalistic interiors, holding back their emotions. There are no children in their expensive countryside house but there are expensive greyhound dogs. However, Liza can’t stay stone cold calm, as she has a secret from her past that burns her from inside, one that she would be happy to get rid of forever… And somewhere near there is a burnt room, and teenager Ulya has the keys.

Law student Oleg, who lives with his mother and stepfather, learns that his father has been released from prison and wants to see him. Having met his dad, Oleg discovers that he is a passionate lover of gambling. So the young man plunges into the world of big poker, underground casinos and research laboratories. Having become part of this shadow reality, Oleg becomes infected with a gaming addiction.

In modern-day Moscow, disaffected former journalism student Roman follows a cryptic invitation to join “the elite” and finds himself forcibly transformed into a vampire. But not your typical creature of the night. Thanks to a parasitical worm known as the Tongue, Roman (now called Rama) has become part of a ruling class of vampires who exercise an “anonymous dictatorship” over humans based not on a thirst for blood but the hunger for money. As various instructors school him in the ways of their elite breed, and Rama explores his new supernatural abilities, he begins a tentative relationship with another newly turned vampire, Hera. His desire for more knowledge about this intoxicating new world also leads him into potentially deadly conflict with Mithra, his mentor who becomes his nemesis.