Don't know title, not sure of genre

[hecatemahadevi]

I never actually read it. I saw the cover in a collection of sci-fi/fantasy book covers I know the local library used to have (they may or may not still have it; this was probably 20 years ago, and I know well-loved books get "retired"). What I remember is that the cover was dark, i.e. a night scene, and showed a pale-skinned woman with black hair and a flowing black dress, holding a large glass goblet of blood. I would assume it's something in either the high fantasy, or low/urban fantasy genres (vampires maybe? or just witches?) but I can't recall anything about the title, the cover's artist, or the author of the book it went to.

Comments

[fred_mouse]

Given 20 years ago, and the description, my first thought is Storm Constantine, in particular her Wraethu series. Covers of The Bewitchment of Love and Hate have the one I was thinking of, which isn't right -- it isn't dark, and it looks more like a bloke. Searching on her name, I found Visionary Tongue, but again, only somewhat what you have described.

[hecatemahadevi]

If it helps at all, the general pose was something like this [IMG]http://i65.tinypic.com/t6qah2.jpg[/IMG] (sorry for crap quality, I did it in like 10 seconds on my Wacom)

[archangelbeth]

Not a bad sketch!

I don't think these are likely to be the right one, but:
https://www.amazon.com/Red-Blood-Tales-Sisters-Grimmer/dp/0879977906 (might have had a different cover for a library edition)

http://www.michaelwhelan.com/galleries/hecates-cauldron/

[vr_trakowski]

It might also be one of the Sword and Sorceress collections (edited by Marion Zimmer Bradley).