Before the grand mirror the count was an empty room. He was no more than stale air and a dusty potted plant. A ghost to the light, yet of solid matter in the world of night, he was flush and ready to join the high rollers. Dice in his pocket, fangs tucked behind centuries thinning lips, he longed for sweetness as a spider-mosquito. Venom to numb. An incapacitated victim as a living juice-box. Though a nagging doubt pulled him back to coffin-comfort, his hand reached for the cold door knob.
We developed a skin coating that was invisible and tough, tough enough to shatter the vampire's teeth on impact.
The dreamscape of the creative story, the language of dreams, the metaphors, the visual puns - vampires are sociopaths, psychopaths, anti-social personality disorder... not having a reflection is not being able to self reflect on their actions. Sucking sweetness from the blood is how they treat those with empathy. Their fear of the light, of a real and loving God... its all there. Perhaps we should read our stories again and see how our neurology has been making medical discoveries for generations.
A vampire trades the ability to generate positive energy for total negative energy possession. Thus to survive they must drink what they lack from others as a parasite. Once drained, the victim can either live as one of the vampires, to copy their cruel role model and master, to feast on others even as they are feasted upon... or die... What the vampire fears most however is those whom have escaped and recovered. For they are the vampire slayers, not born but made in the kiln of hell.
Those who are cold within, who let their love wither and die, are dead. Those who never inwardly reflect on whom they are and instead suck others dry, lose their own reflection. They become scared of the light, for it shows them what they became. They become scared of God, for God sees what they became. These are the vampires of reality. These are the ones that drain the good hearted and demand either conversion or death.
He was an aristocratic vampire with an empire of victims to suck blood from. He had no use for personal reflection and so in the mirror he saw none. His life purpose was empty of all but greed, domination and lust. Were he to see the most perfect of roses, he would only find purpose in the thorns.
A vampire drains sweetness from the blood, they bite and push the victim into cold behaviours. To maintain this they delude the victim of their love, they pretend to be their protector even as they drain them of everything that made them so sweet. Once the sugar is gone the vampire blames the victim for having no more, they beat what is left and rage at the unfairness of needing to find a new victim. Woe is the vampire, pity the vampire, the charming, aristocratic vampire with such wonderfully good manners and poise.
Vampires are real, we call them sociopaths.