The driving force behind the vampires in each of these novels is different. Dracula has long been thought to be a book written as a Christian allegory. ”The struggle is not merely between good guys and a supremely bad man, but between high-minded Christians and a minion of the devil. Dracula is a creature of the night, cut off from God because he has chosen immortality under the sponsorship of Satan rather than of Christ.” Count Dracula is a demon embodied, set on pure evil.

Anne Rice also used the demon philosophy to explain her vampires. They are said to be filled with a demon that has a particular taste for blood. This demon does not control the vampire, though. Her vampires are exquisitely human with demonic undertones. The are almost portrayed as another race that runs parallel to the human being, only on a more supreme level. This is a philosophy that can also be seen in Dracula, except the concept is not as fully realized.

It is the Necroscope vampires that have a peculiar twist to their anatomy. Lumley has chosen to explain the vampire phenomenon in a scientific way. The actual vampire is no more than a giant slug-like parasite. It grows inside a man’s body, eventually taking over their system. The mind of the man remains his own, only enhanced by the vampire. The parasite stays hidden within the man, until death.

In this passage, Vassily has just killed a vampire. Here he sees the vampire’s leach like parasite, unveiled. ” ’You’ll recall I had lain my jacked across his exposed guts? Now the jacket was gripped by some invisible force from beneath, torn apart and tossed violently, in two pieces, to the ceiling. Following it, lashing wildly, a single tapering tentacle of leprous flesh burst upward from his stomach, twisting and writhing in a grim paroxysm.’ ” The rendering of this vampire is very unique. Lumley has taken a virtually unexplained myth and given it a slightly science-fiction background.