...and if you'd like an updated, exquisite rendering of female vampire, then look no further than Angela Carter's The Lady of the House of Love (from that wonderful collection of short stories where fairy tale is Gothic is adult is gripping in its sensuous use of language!) The Bloody Chamber.
'On moonless nights... the Countess will sniff the air and howl. She drops, now, on all fours. Crouching, quivering, she catches the scent of her prey. Delicious crunch of the fragile bones of rabbits and small, furry things she pursues with fleet, four-footed speed; she will creep home, whimpering, with blood smeared on her cheeks. She pours water from the ewer in her bedroom into the bowl, she washes her face with the wincing, fastidious gestures of a cat.'
Got to say... great alliteration ('crouching, quivering'; 'fleet, four-footed). Present tense for the power of immediacy. Onomatopoeia - 'crunch', 'whimpering'. Dynamic verbs, great adjectives (particularly fond of the assonance in 'wincing, fastidious'). The weave of fairy tale into the Gothic spaces of 'moonless nights' - a touch of fee, fie, fo fum, Little Red Riding Hood, all rolled into this one.
What's not to like?
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