The Vampire Countess

Written in 1856 - over 40 years before Bram Stoker's Dracula - The Vampire Countess is one of three classic vampire stories penned by Paul Féval, along with Knightshade and Vampire City. The particular gift of Countess Addhema was to be reborn as beautiful and young as love itself every time she could apply to the hideous bareness of her skull a living head of hair. This was why her tomb was full of the skulls of young women and adolescent girls. In much the same fashion as the savages of North America who strip the flesh from the heads of their vanquished enemies and carry their scalps away as trophies, Addhema selected and carried off to her sepulchre the most beautiful and happiest faces she could find, so that she might tear from their heads the prey that would secure a few days of youth-for the spell only lasted a few days: as many days as the years of life that remained to the victim.