Although there are many similarities between vampire novels, Dracula, The Vampire Chronicles, and The Necroscope Series have all chosen to show the exchange of blood and the making of a vampire in very different ways.

In Dracula, there is no detailed description of blood drinking. The book leaves that aspect to the reader’s imagination, but there are many instances where the victim is described after the attack. Always small red marks appear on the neck, and the victim looks pale and listless. When Dracula feeds repeatedly from the character Lucy, she begins to take on some vampire characteristics as her body transforms. ”Whilst asleep she looked stronger, although more haggard, and her breathing was softer; her open mouth showed the pale gums drawn back from the teeth, which thus looked positively longer and sharper than usual…”

After the transformation is complete, Lucy becomes a wicked vampire that preys on young children. There is an interesting correlation here to Jewish folklore, where the demon Lilith (occasionally thought an inspiration to the vampire myth) is known to steal new born babies from their cradles and feed off them. ”As she looked, her eyes blazed with unholy light, and the face became wreathed with a voluptuous smile. Oh, God, how it made me shudder to see it! With a careless motion, she flung to the ground, callous as a devil, the child that up to now she had clutched strenuously to her breast…” This quote shows the demonic monster Lucy has become.

In Interview with the Vampire the transformation of Louis into a vampire is very classic and straightforward. Folk tradition states a vampire can be made by either being bitten by another vampire, or by drinking the blood of another vampire. In Louis’ case, he must be drained to the point of death, and then given a transfusion of life sustaining blood by the vampire Lestat. ” ’Be still. I am going to drain you to the threshold of death, and I want you to be quiet, so quiet that you can hear the flow of blood through your veins, so quiet that you can hear the flow of that same blood through mine. It is your consciousness, your will, which must keep you alive.’ ”

Anne Rice has, by far, developed the most sensual and romantic prose to describe the exchange of blood.

” ’Lestat whispered to me, his lips moving against my neck. I remember that the movement of his lips raised the hair all over my body, sent a shock of sensation through my body that was not unlike the pleasure of passion…’ ”

” ’I saw nothing but light then as I drew blood. And then this next thing, this next thing was…sound. A dull roar at first and then a pounding like the pounding of a drum, growing louder and louder, as if some enormous creature were coming up on one slowly through a dark and alien forest, pounding as he came a huge drum. And then there came the pounding of another drum, as if another giant were coming yards behind him, and each giant, intent on his own drum, gave no notice to the rhythm of the other.’ ”

Throughout the book, Anne Rice shows the reader a peculiar view of the vampire. Rather then making them obscene monsters as would be fitting based on tradition, she has given them wholly human qualities, except, due to their supernatural powers, the human qualities are heightened almost beyond endurance. The vampire Lestat states to Louis at one point, ”Pain is terrible for you…You feel it like no other creature because you are a vampire”

In the Necroscope series, Brian Lumley has labeled the vampire characters as demonic creatures bent only on world domination. Louis and Lestat, the Interview with the Vampire heroes, seek only to survive in a cruel, human world, but Thibor and Ferenczy, Lumley’s vampires? What would be the point of living in a human world when you can kill them all off and live in a world of your own making. In Vamphyri! there is no sensual drinking of blood. The precious fluid is only food, and the blood of an animal or even an insect can sooth a vampire’s hunger. Ferenczy states: ” ’ We sup on blood,’ he called back, chuckling a little beyond the door. ’On course meat if and when we must, but the blood is the true life. The fowl are for you Thibor. Tear out their throats and drink well. Squeeze them dry…’ ”

For these vampires, ”A girl, a boy, a goat –blood is blood, ’ ” but ”of all the founts of immortality, of all nectar-bearing flowers, that one source from which a vampire would most prefer to sip is the throbbing red rush of another vampire’s blood!” The act of creating a vampire also is void of sensual reference in the Necroscope series. Due to the fact that the cause of vampirism is a parasite, the exchange of blood alone is not enough to create a new vampire. According to Lumley, a vampire is born with one egg that it may give to a worthy host, and that egg will spawn a new vampire. As the parasite grows, it takes over the body of its host, but not the mind. The thoughts and feelings of the host remain the same, only amplified a thousand times by the vampire’s power.

”To receive the seed of a vampire is to know an almost fatal agony. Almost fatal, but never quite. No, for the vampire chooses his egg-bearer with great care and cunning. He must be strong, that poor unfortunate; he must be keen witted, preferably cold and callous.” The act is over quickly, although takes years, even centuries, for the parasite to mature. ”A vampire seed can pass though human flesh like water through sand.”

The Necroscope vampires are also definite monsters when the chance to drink blood arrives. Here the vampire Thibor describes the vampire Ferenczy as he bends to take a preternatural sip. ”The pores on his face opened up more yet, pockmarks cratering his flesh. His jaws, enormous already, elongated, with a sound like gradually tearing cloth, and his leathery lips rolled back until his mouth was all bulging, crimson gums and jagged, dripping teeth. I had seen Faethor’s teeth before, but never displayed like this.”

Thibor continues as the elder vampire finds the perfect spot for his fangs incision.

”I felt his knowing hands examining my back, felt the suddenly fearful squirming of something inside, something Faethor had discovered clamped to my spine. Aye, and then I felt the monster’s great teeth punching through my flesh like hammered nails, pinning my immature parasite where it writhed in its own agony.”