Why Don’t Vampires Bleed?

Why don’t vampires bleed?

Well, we do.

One day, sequestered away from the boiling summer sun, I free my blade from its scabbard, hesitant at its surreptitiously sharp edge. I am hungry, and inexperienced, and foolish. I would seek the blood from my own veins.

I draw the blade across my arm, with a wince... and watch little more than dust follow, pale ash that shakes free in the path of the blade, leaving no trace at all. It scatters into the still air like a plume of smoke, and disappears entirely.

The wound is gone.

I stare, where it had been. What have I become?

...

I sink my teeth into his throat, under the cover of night. I lurch over him, in the moonlight of his tower window, dragging sickly royal crimson from his form, never the wiser.

I return, silently and swiftly, to my roost. Among the glinting silver and abounding shadow of my laboratory, I kneel, again, the power of my hunt shuddering in my veins.

I draw my blade across my arm again. I watch something alien come forth: blood.

Thick, dark red droplets.

The wound remains, for a moment, while I watch in awe. Yet, slowly, the blood turns to ash, wet clumps of dark slush steadily drooling from my arm...

I sit there, watching. I feel my meal begin to ‘digest’, the warmth again fading from my skin and that strange energy filtering away. The droplets turn from clumps to thick and voluminous vapor. Soft, reddish-black fog, dancing away from my skin and toward the cold night air through the window.

I still feel alive. Full. Content, maybe. The lethargy sets in, ever so slightly, but I am awake and aware and out of the hungry stupor that consumes me if I wait too long to feed.

Something saps the life force out of my blood. From fluid, to vapor, to simple, pallid dry ash. And each time I feed, I reclaim a little bit of that life force for myself, and get to feel truly alive again... for a few, fleeting moments, before the debt is extracted again.

What else am I feeding...?