Anaplekte

THE KERES were the female  spirits ( daimones) of violent or cruel death, including death in battle, by accident, murder or ravaging disease. Another spirit  Thanatos, was the god of the more peaceful kinds of death. She is the wife of Thanatos.

Background
They were agents of the Moirai (Fates), Birth-Daimones who measured out the length of a man's life when he first entered the world, and Moros (Doom) the Daimon who drove a man towards his inevitable destruction. The Keres were cravers of blood and feasted upon it after ripping a soul free from the mortally wounded bodies and sending it on their way to Haides. Thousands of Keres haunted the battlefield, fighting amongst themselves like vultures over the dying. The Keres had no absolute power over the life of men, but in their hunger for blood would seek accomplish death beyond the bounds of fate. Zeus and the other gods, however, could stop them in their course or speed them on. The Olympian gods are often described standing by their favorites in battle, beating the clawing death spirits from them. Some of the Keres were personifications of epidemic diseases, which haunted areas riven by plague. (See also the Nosoi). The Keres were depicted as fanged, taloned women dressed in bloody garments.