Demonic Vampires

Vampires, as we all know, cannot bear to look at crosses or touch holy water (most of the time, anyway). Traditionally, vampires are considered "unholy", which is probably why these weaknesses exist in the first place. So, it should be no surprise that many creators have taken this characterization to its logical conclusion. Vampires, in some way or another, are connected to another unholy, supernatural being: demons.

In addition to the aforementioned weaknesses, vampires and demons have a surprising amount in common: they're both immortal, they're both associated with bats, and they both seek to collect human life forces (blood for vampires, souls for demons). In fact, this trope is actually Older Than They Think. In older myths, vampires were either corpses possessed by demons or were demons themselves — for that matter, the divisions between different variants on the themes of "malevolent human-shaped thing" and "evil spirit" were often a lot fuzzier than they tend to get in modern media.

The exact nature of the association between vampires and demons tends to vary. Sometimes, becoming a vampire without getting bitten may require a Deal with the Devil. Other times, demons may behave in a manner similar to vampires, devouring souls instead of blood. In either case, make sure you've got a bucket of holy water nearby!

Note, this trope is not about the stock portrayal of vampires as unholy monsters. This is for when vampires are explicitly stated or shown to have connections with literal demons, if not the Devil himself. The Religious Vampire can be seen as the opposite of this trope, though not necessarily, given the existence of Heaven's Devils. See also Dragons Are Demonic, for another mythical creature often conflated with demons. Also related is Vampiric Werewolf, a hybrid that combines multiple classical monsters.

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Examples:

Anime and Manga

• Digimon Adventure: Myotismon is a vampire-like Digimon whose Mega form is a giant red and black winged demon.
• Hellsing: Alucard became a vampire when he renounced God and made a Deal with the Devil upon death, and is very much considered a demonic creature. Especially when he takes on one of his One-Winged Angel forms that are derived from the millions of souls he's consumed as a vampire.

Comic Books

• Dracula vs. King Arthur: Vlad was transformed into a vampire by Lucifer. Befitting someone turned by the devil, he is very vulnerable to holy items. Vampires can be burned by the Cross, weapons marked with the Cross will kill them, and drinking from the Holy Grail doesn't cure them of vampirism, but makes them explode!
• Marvel Universe:
  • This is what most Marvel vampires are at their core. Back before the Great Cataclysm, worshippers of Chthon (and maybe Set), an Elder God turned demon, and Earth's first Evil Sorcerer, used the Chthon Scrolls (which would later become the Darkhold) to turn fellow follower Varnae into the first Vampire. While multiple Vampire Sects have been made in the following millennia, most of all have their roots in Varnae, and by extension Chthon.
  • X-Factor (2006): Issue #215 has Jamie and Layla investigating the death of a man who was found drained of blood with two puncture wounds in his neck. His daughter believes her stepmother to be the culprit, but the killer is revealed to be a Vandella, a vampiric demon spirit that possesses people while they are asleep.
• Purgatori is a demonic-looking vampire, the result of her Fallen Angel blood reacting to being turned by a normal (if very ancient) vampire. She frequently interacts with the forces of Hell as well.
• Vampirella:
  • The comic is kind of all over the place with this. In some versions, Lilith is presented as a demon, in others she's just an ordinary vampire from the planet Drakulon who associated and/or mated with demons. Usually Earth vampires are a different species. Sometimes not.
  • According to the 2014 run, vampires were born from Lilith mating with demons. The eponymous character herself is the daughter of Lilith and has all the powers of a vampire with none of their weaknesses.

Fan Works

• Queen Of Blood Sirwill: Vampirism originated as a curse created by devils to lure power-hungry mortals into damning themselves when they lacked the willpower to either feed on animals or take the blood of humans without killing them.

Films — Live-Action

• Blade: Trinity: Drake's true form is a tall, demonic figure with red skin and horned appendages on his head.
• Bram Stoker's Dracula: This version of Dracula became a vampire by renouncing God upon coming home from the Turk wars and finding that his love had taken her own life (due to the enemy sending a letter lying that they had killed him) which mean she won't get into Heaven due to her suicide. He stabs a cross which bleeds (for some reason) and drinks the blood from it, apparently as a a Deal with the Devil, which turns him into a vampire.
• Van Helsing: Dracula's immortality is a result of him making a covenant with the devil.

Literature

• Dracula: The eponymous Count himself started out as a mortal man who attended The Scholomance. It's implied that it was through Satanic magic, not a bite, that Dracula became a vampire (albeit after he died from his mortal death in the war, and resurrected as a walking undead later).
• Mortal Instruments: It is said the first vampires were created by the demon Hecate who transformed Vlad III and his court into vampires as a reward for sacrificing people to her in a public ceremony.
• That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime: The "Bloody Lord" Roy Valentine is a powerful vampire who is counted as one of the Demon Lords, who in turn are associated loosely with the Red Primordial Demon (and strongest True Demon Lord) Guy Crimson. Roy is also considered a mortal enemy of the religious faith of Luminism in ways that paint him as demon. He's actually the subordinate and decoy Demon Lord to True Demon Lord "Queen of Nightmares" Luminous Valentine, who is the true master of the vampire race and actual peer to Guy. Ironically, Roy's twin brother Louis Valentine works as the "Holy Emperor" of the very empire that worships Luminous as the god of Luminism.
• The Vampire Chronicles: According to The Vampire Lestat, the first vampire was created when a bodiless demon fused with the blood of a dying Egyptian queen, and its power sustains all younger vampires. However, later books (and the Devil himself) clarify that the "demon" is a once-human spirit who escaped the afterlife, so vampires have no direct link to Hell.

Live-Action TV

• Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Vampires are soulless entities, created when demonic spirits possess the corpses of other vampire victims. They were first created when the last pure demon on Earth mingled his blood with humans, and they are despised as half-breeds by other demons.
• Penny Dreadful: All vampires are descended from Dracula, who is revealed to have been one of the two leaders, alongside his brother Lucifer, of the fallen angels who rebelled against God and were cast down from Heaven, except that whereas Lucifer was banished to Hell, Dracula was exiled to Earth.

Mythology and Folklore

• Celtic Mythology alludes to this with one of the words for vampire, "deamhan fola" (pr: DOW-an Foh-lah), which literally means "Blood demon".
• In Eastern European vampire lore, vampires are souls condemned to walk the earth and drink blood for some awful sin (usually suicide, witchcraft, or heresy) and are often regarded as being animated by demons.
• The Jewish diaspora in Europe, cross-fertilising ideas drawn from the folklore of the Gentiles all around them, developed a vampire mythos all of its own. Several mediaeval rabbinical texts such as the Midrash Shmuel and the Sefer Hasidim discuss vampires, such as the Alukah ("leech") and the Motest Dam (the "blood-sucker"), defining them as part of a specialised host of sub-demons in the line of Lilith.
• In some accounts, the accursed first wife of Adam, Lilith, was cast out of Eden^note For the cardinal sin of refusing to obey her husband Adam and to accept she was to be subordinate to him and assumed demonic form. Extra-Biblical folklore says that she became a demon of the night with an insatiable thirst for the blood of new mothers and their babies. In this tale, the first vampire arrived at the same time as the first humans. And an extra dimension of horror and disgust was added to this tale by the fact that Jewish practice places an absolute taboo on consuming blood.

Tabletop Games

• The Delver's Guide to Beast World: Unlike normal D&D, vampires are classified as fiends instead of undead, possessed by demons that were summoned by a club of decadent nobles centuries ago. If the host is destroyed the demon returns to the stone used to summon it and calls to the dead host's children to tempt them into recreating the possession ritual.
• In Nomine: As with all other undead, vampires can only be created through rituals created by the demons and only passed down to favored Hellsworn sorcerers. As a result, all vampires in existence are part of, serve, or are fugitives from circles of Hellsworn sorcerers, and are common servants and patsies for the demons of Death and Fate.
• Magic: The Gathering:
  • The vampires of Innistrad were created when an alchemist consulted a demon for help with a famine and was given a ritual that involved drinking the blood of an angel.
  • Lord Xander, the founder of New Capenna's Maestros, used to only be a sickly human noble. When his pact with an archdemon let him absorb its power he also became the plane's first vampire.
• Night's Black Agents: "Damned" vampires are the result of direct demonic action.
• Ravenloft: Count Strahd von Zarovich Was Once a Man who made a Deal with the Devil. He became the tyrannical ruler of his own demiplane (later on just one domain of many as the demiplane grew) and was referred to as "the devil Strahd".
• Vampire: The Masquerade: Not long after Caine was banished and branded by God, he met Lilith who taught him magic. After partaking in a ceremony in which he drank Lilith's blood from a bowl, he was met by three angels. One by one, each angel offered Caine a chance for redemption and each time he rejected it. With each rejection both Caine and his children are given a curse by a particular angel: Michael curses Caine to fear his living flame, Raphael cursed Caine to fear and to be burned by the sun, and Uriel curses Caine to drink only blood, eat only ash, cling to the dark and to have a body so cold it freezes to the touch.
  • Despite all of that, if there's one thing most vampires hate, it's infernalists. And there is no greater target for their wrath than the Baali, a Bloodline of vampires who aim to spread corruption in order to sate their demonic masters... or keep them from waking up and making everything much worse for everyone. It depends on the Baali.
• Vampire: The Requiem has the antagonist faction of Belial's Brood, who style themselves with plenty of inverted pentagrams and blood sacrifice. In truth, while they believe all Kindred are somewhat demonic in origin, their main focus is on embracing the Beast by feeding it through atrocity and depravity.

Video Games

• Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night: Implied. Most of the supernatural creatures encountered in the Hell-Hold are very explicitly called "demons", but two of them are also vampires: Orlok Dracul, librarian of the Livre Ex Machina, and Bloodless, a boss who grants the Blood Steal shard (allowing Miriam to consume blood shed by her enemies to heal herself).
• Castlevania:
  • Dracula is treated as being an anti-god thanks to him being a Dark Lord who commands an army of demons to first oppose God's will and then mankind. While he normally looks like an elegant vampire, his One-Winged Angel forms are generally demonic looking.
  • Succubi are demons strictly speaking, but primarily depicted as seductive vampires in Castlevania to the point that the ability the Succubus' soul grants in the Sorrow games lets you drain health like a vampire and is even explicitly stated to be one of Dracula's primary abilities, despite the fact that he's neither a Succubus nor an Incubus.
  • Castlevania: Lords of Shadow: Ironically, vampires in this setting came into existence as a byproduct of an Angelic Transformation. When the founding trio of the Brotherhood of Light ascended to Heaven and became angelic beings, they left behind both their inner darkness and their physical bodies. While their good halves were transformed into Angels, their dark halves became monsters, with Carmilla in particular becoming the first vampire. However, Dracula is an entirely different monster altogether. After Gabriel Belmont drank the blood of the Elder Vampire Laura and took the power of The Forgotten One^* a demon on par with Satan, but from a different reality. for himself, he became a vampire unlike any other. All vampires before him started out as monstrous Bat-like creatures after turning, and then become more human like as the creatures go by. Gabriel completely skipped this process, and even fundamentally changed the state of vampirism in its entirety.
  • Carmilla's top enforcers, Lieutenant Brauner and Commander Olrox, are actual demons turned vampires.
• Darkstalkers runs the spectrum of demonic vampire association.
  • Dimitri is the primary vampire character, but transforms into a demon for some special moves.
  • Morrigan and Lilith are Succubi, but their nature as such is depicted as being seductive vampires mostly, similar to Castlevania.
  • Jedah is a pure demon, but his powers involve both his own blood and the blood of others. He steals people's souls, but the process of doing so is much bloodier than most depictions of soul stealing, bringing vampirism to mind.
• Devil May Cry 3: Dante's Awakening: The demon Nevan has some vampiric elements in her design. She is associated with bats, has a seductive personality, and can drain the player's health.
• The Elder Scrolls: Vampirism (and undeath in general) can be traced back to Molag Bal, Deadric Prince of Corruption and Domination and probably the closest thing the setting has to a Satanic Archetype. The first vampire, Lamae Beolfag, arose from the corpse of a woman whom Molag raped to death, and those who want to become vampires but can't find another vampire to bite them often end up performing horrific ceremonies to gain Molag's favor.
• Madworld: Elise, the ninth boss of the game, is supposed to be a vampire. This is obvious from the fact that she's accompanied by a swarm of bats, has fangs, and tries to drink Jack's blood during their power struggle. However, she also has a large set of horns on her head that can make her look like a succubus.
• Monster Hunter: Rise: In the expansion Sunbreak, the vampiric Elder Dragon Malzeno draws its power from the Qurio, red leech-like creatures which suck blood from other Large Monsters and in turn feed the Elder Dragon (an example of symbiosis) in exchange for protection. Later in the game, the Guild finds out Malzeno wasn't the original master of the Qurio. Its real source is a massive, devilish Elder Dragon known as Gaismagorm (promptly named "the Archdemon of the Abyss"). In a nice twist to a Deal with the Devil, Gaismagorm picked up the short stick after being defeated by Malzeno and robbed of its power source. It's only after Malzeno's death that Gaismagorm can call back the Qurio and regain its original strength.
• Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous: Vampires appear as co-belligerents of the demons of the Worldwound. A vampire in a casket appears as an optional encounter in the fortress of Drezen when the Fifth Crusade retakes it from the demons at the end of Chapter 2, while in Chapter 4 there are several encounters with vampires in the Abyss.
• Touhou Project: Vampires are considered a subtype of devils. The most prominent vampire in the series, Remilia Scarlet, is even known as the Scarlet Devil.
• Vampyr (2018): The vampires are supernatural creatures with power over both blood and shadows. The real demonic aspect comes from their weakness to Holy items, and are unable to enter churches. Furthermore are the primordial vampires.
  • Jonathan initially believed that when his vampire sire, Myrddin Wyltt, appeared before him, he was using an apparition or an avatar to speak from afar. Only to learn that no, he's been directly speaking to him every time, face to face. Meaning he actually does look like a humanoid figure made of floating pieces of glass made of blood.
  • The mother of Jonathan's vampire sire is the Morrigan, an Eldritch Abomination who causes devastation by waking up, whose dreams cause literal Hate Plagues, and is the progenitor of all vampires. Not even her son truly understands what she is, and you only meet and fight a shadow made of blood. Despire being able to have a full personal conversation with others, she's explicitly described as not being fully awake when doing so.
• Warcraft III: Dreadlords are the commanders of the Burning Legion with vampiric traits, such as healing themselves and their allies by attacking in melee, sending swarms of bats against enemies or putting selected victims into unnatural sleep. They can also summon enormous burning demons to crash-land on their enemies.

Webcomics

• True Villains: The first vampire was originally a human who made a deal with a demon for power. Unusually for the trope, the gods are all Above Good and Evil, and the demon served the same God of Progress who's popular among heroes. Nonetheless, the vampire is an Omnicidal Maniac Undead Abomination.

Web Videos

• Critical Role: One of the monsters Matt homebrewed to use in season 2 is the Nergaliid, a devil with the appearance of a corpulent, humanoid toad. Like a vampire, it feeds by siphoning lifeforce from its victims' bodies, and those who die from being fed on are resurrected as zombies.

Western Animation

• Adventure Time:
  • Marceline the Vampire Queen is the daughter of Hunsen Abadeer, who's not just a demon but a Satanic Archetype. It's played around with, though. Marceline's vampirism has no direct link to her demonic heritage. She is actually the offspring of a demon and a human, who only became a vampire after being bitten by the Vampire King.
  • The aforementioned Hunsen, while he is a demon, looks like a vampire and is shown lurking around at night, preying on mortals so he can devour their souls.
• Castlevania (2017): Vampires, along with the other type of monsters featured in this series (the Night Creatures) are both apparently demonic in nature, as they share the same fatal weakness to holy weapons (including Holy Water).

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