Make Me Dead: A Vampyres of Hollywood Mystery

by Adrienne Barbeau

  Laissez les bon temps rouler.

  It was easy to get to him. I’ve learned a lot from Theda Bara. One second I’m in the baya and the next I’m in The Rising. I followed his scent to his room. And then, just like that, I was standing over him, watching that maudire batarde flail in his sleep.

  Pic kee toi, Peter King. You fils de pute. Next time I won’t let you wake up.

  If he hadn’t had his gun, he’d be leftovers by now.

  Mais, so I couldn’t take Peter, but there were plenty others to choose from. I scanned the line of picketers on the banquette outside the hotel.

  “Declare your sin of Sodom!” yelled a woman wearing a Thank God for Dead Soldiers t-shirt and a God Hates Fags visor. The saleau next to her had on a t-shirt that read Thank God for IEDs. He was yelling, “Horror films are the gates to hell!” There were about fifteen others, all dressed in t-shirts with hate-mongering slogans on them. They were carrying signs: Zombie Souls are Damned; God Hates Cartoons; Trekkies Worship Satan; Horror Fans Are Doomed. I laughed out loud. What a selection to be culled.

  When Ovsanna first revealed her true nature to me and I let her feed on me to save herself, she told me she had slaughtered indiscriminately for the first 350 years of her life. She killed whenever she pleased and fed whenever she wanted. Then the Turks came to her homeland and massacred the Armenians. They raped and tortured the women and sent them stumbling into the desert, nude, to die of dehydration. Young mothers who were breastfeeding tried drinking their own urine to produce milk and when that didn’t work, they abandoned their babies in the hopes the Turks would take them in. The Armenian men and boys were locked in their village churches and set on fire.

  After Ovsanna watched the Turks slaughter a million and a half Armenians, she vowed to never again be controlled by the nature of her species.

  I’ve only been vampyre for less than a year. I haven’t made any such vow. Mais, I haven’t been killing just for the fun of it— although each time I drain someone, it flames my desire for more. But I have tried to be careful. Maybe exercise a little ‘moral’ responsibility in choosing my victims. I search for those who won’t be missed, first. That’s not necessarily moral, really, it’s more for my own safety. No need to get the police involved if I can avoid it.

  The problem with feeding on the homeless, aside from my heightened sense of smell and their heightened sense of stench, is that they’ve usually got alcohol in their blood. Makes me sick the next morning. And I learned early on that vampyres can’t vomit, so that just leaves me feeling sick all day. That puts homeless alcoholics on the list with gluten— something to avoid if I’ve got other choices.

  Pimps are a good choice. They sort of fill both requirements: I don’t care much if their girls miss them, and it’s a pretty safe bet no one’s going to call the cops if they disappear. Well, maybe Rush Limbaugh, but who’ll believe him?

  So sometimes I prowl Murray Hill, looking for the pimps who run the girls in the neighborhood. And coo-wee, the fat saleau standing in the picket line wearing the God H8tes The Oscars t-shirt was the same bastard I saw two weeks ago, leaning against an alley wall near 36th and Lex. He was wearing the same t-shirt, although then it wasn’t quite as easy to read. Not with the head of a teen-age boy jerking up and down in front of him.

  Well, now I know where my next meal is coming from. I don’t give a damn who misses this guy. And if the cops have any sense, they’re not going to care either. Especially not if they’re Vets. Thank God for IEDs my ass.

  He was standing at the far end of the protesters. I walked out a side door and approached him from across the street. Except for my outfit— all black and Goth inspired— there was nothing to identify me as a conventioneer. I stepped between him and the woman with her back to him who was trampling an American flag.

  “Hi,” I said, smiling, looking into his eyes. “So, you don’t like the movies, huh? And I guess you don’t like soldiers, either?”

  “Soldiers spill sodomite semen and movies are the words of the devil. All movies are made by the homos. God hates the homos. Yer not a homo, are ya? Yer dressed like one, but yer awful pretty to be a homo. That sure would be a sin.”

  “I can barely hear you— there’s so much noise out here. Can we walk down to the corner?” I turned away from him and called over my shoulder, “That girl’s sign says Catholic Priests are Vampires. Do you think Dracula was Catholic?”

  He followed me. “Wait up, lady. I can’t hear what yer sayin’.”

  I turned the corner into the entrance for the hotel’s underground parking lot. The driveway was one lane only. The exit was up another ramp onto a street on the opposite side of the hotel. So… no chance anyone would be driving out. There was a dumpster positioned three feet away from the wall. I stepped behind it and waited.

  The grande beede came barreling around the corner, trying to hold his sign up with one hand and his pants with the other. He’d stopped yelling for me, probably ’cause he could barely breathe, he was so fat. I grabbed his sign and pulled him past me, forcing him to fall to his knees. Before he could open his mouth to scream, I stepped on his back and kicked his head to the cement. I needed him alive so I could feel the blood pumping down my throat when I finally plunged my fangs into his veins, but the sound of his skull cracking was so satisfying; it made me feel so good. I dragged his fat body to the far end of the dumpster where we were hidden from anyone entering the lot. Then I started in on him.

  With my nails I tore the flesh from his throat to expose his jugular. It was beautiful, pulsing there, denuded of muscle and tissue. Even in the dim light of the garage, it shone like one of the Dali paintings Ovsanna has hanging in her screening room. A big fat blue worm just begging to be pierced.

  Which is what I did. Slowly, deliberately.

  The resistance I met sliding my fangs into the vein brought me surging to the edge of orgasm. That took me by surprise; it’s never happened like that before. I began to suck— the hot blood pouring down my throat; red molten syrup streaming into me while I kept my orgasm at bay. Delicious— through my entire body.

  When the old man’s heart stopped beating and his veins no longer pumped, I threw back my head in a silent scream and let my orgasm shudder through me, through every part of me, every cell.

  And finally I was sated. Not just with his blood. With an orgasm like I’d never had before. Hot damn.

  I hid behind the dumpster while a hotel guest drove past. Then I shredded the rest of him in stringy pieces and scattered them under the garbage in the trash bin. I tore his sign apart, and his clothes, and tossed them in with him.

  Now, time to visit Miz Foret again.

  32. OVSANNA

  “When you came to my house last December looking to arrest Maral for sending the Rougarou to kill you, I told you I’d sent her away and we’d never hear from her again. That was true— the sending away part. But there was more I didn’t tell you. I barely knew you. I didn’t think you needed to know what had happened. Already you didn’t trust me. I didn’t want you worrying that I might do to you what I’d done to her.”

  He was pissed. His expression didn’t change, but I could see it in his eyes. He asked, very quietly, as though he knew the answer, “What did you do?”

  “After I watched you and SuzieQ kill that thing and I knew you were safe, I came back to the house. Maral was asleep. I woke her up and forced her to tell me everything— her plans to use sorcery to get rid of you, and when that didn’t work, how she sent the beast to tear you apart. I was so enraged with her, I turned. I couldn’t control myself. I attacked her. I drained her. And then, when she was almost dead, I came out of it. But I’d fed for too long and she was dying. The only way I could save her was to turn her, to make her one of my own. I gave her the choice and that’s what she chose. She chose to turn.”

  “So… you’re telling me that Maral is a vampyre.” He pulled back from me ever so slightly. “That woman is a fucking bloodsucker and you’ve known that all t
his time and you haven’t told me. What the fuck, Ovsanna? You let me think she was long gone and out of our lives.”

  “She was, Peter! I sent her away and told her not to come back.”

  “But now you think she’s here? You think that was her in my room last night? That thing that was trying to kill me?” The angrier he got, the quieter his voice became. It was more disturbing than if he’d been yelling.

  “I know she’s here,” I told him. “She came to see me in my suite yesterday morning—”

  “Jesus Christ, Ovsanna!” He was yelling now.

  “—She was dressed in Goth clothing. I think she’s who you saw at the con Friday afternoon, and yes, now I think she’s who you sensed in your room.”

  Peter closed his eyes. Pressed his lips together as though trying to hold back another outburst. I watched his chest rise and fall slowly as he took in deep breaths through his nose.

  “I know you’re angry, Peter,” I said, “and you have every right to be. But I never thought she’d come into your life again. I sent her away for good. And since then, there’s never been a reason to tell you what I’d done.”

  Controlled rage colored his voice. “And how about after she showed up at your door yesterday? You didn’t think you should warn me then? Hell, Ovsanna, even if she wasn’t a bloodsucker, the bitch wants me dead. You didn’t think you should tell me she’s in the neighborhood?”

  I couldn’t look him in the eye. And the angrier he got the more I wanted him. What was going on with me?

  “And why did she show up?” he yelled. “You want to at least tell me that? Maybe she wanted to know which room I’m in, huh? God dammit, Ovsanna! What do you think you’re doing? You think you have to protect me? I can’t take care of myself? You have that little respect for me? The almighty vampyre queen is the only one with any power around here?”

  “No, Peter. No. That wasn’t it at all. This doesn’t have anything to do with you. She wasn’t after you. She came to ask me to kill her.”

  “Oh, that’s rich. Well, why didn’t you just send her on over to me? I would have shot her in a heartbeat. Hell, I almost did last night. She should have stuck around, if that’s what she was hoping for. What the hell are you talking about? She wants you to kill her? Why?”

  “What she really wants is to be human again. To feel the needs and loves and pains and longings that humans feel. Don’t ask me why— your existence seems like hell to me. But she wants to suffer again, because “at least she’ll be feeling something”. I don’t know what. I guess human emotions constitute being alive in her book. Anything else isn’t worth immortality. So when I told her I couldn’t help her, she begged me to put her out of her misery. I sent her away. Told her she simply needs to be in her new skin a while longer. Told her she’d forget what being human feels like eventually and once she’s forgotten, she won’t miss those feelings at all. At all!”

  “That’s really the way it is with you, isn’t it? You don’t have feelings. You don’t give a good goddamn about the people you’re involved with. Sucking and fucking— that’s all this relationship means to you. That’s all you’re capable of, isn’t it, Ovsanna? Now I get it. You’ve been telling me all along how it is with your kind, but then you turn around and act like there’re feelings there, and boy, I should have known— you’re one hell of an actress. It’s all bullshit, isn’t it? Are you even capable of caring that two of your acting buddies just got killed? You don’t feel anything at all and you’re happy that way. Oh wait, happiness is a feeling, too— so maybe you can’t even experience that.”

  “Oh, Peter… what do you want me to say? I’m a vampyre. We’re solitary creatures. No, we don’t love like you do, we don’t need like you do; we won’t collapse from the pain of losing someone, but that doesn’t mean we don’t feel something. I care for you, Peter, I love being with you. I trust you. You’re the only human I trust. Can’t that be enough?”

  “You trust me? You never told me you’d turned Maral. You didn’t tell me she was here in the hotel. That’s trust? What is that— Nosferatu trust? Highly selective about what you sink your teeth into trust?”

  “I told you. She was gone, out of our lives. There was no reason to tell you. And then yesterday, there was no time. And again, no reason. I thought I got rid of her, for good and all.”

  His voice leveled out. “Well, you didn’t. She was in my room last night, trying to kill me. Or who knows, maybe she was just thirsty. That’s something she learned from you, isn’t it? Peter’s the go-to guy when your taste buds are parched. Let’s have a drink on him.”

  “Don’t be flip. This isn’t about her pulling up to a trough. If she was in your room, then yes, she was there to kill you.”

  “Well, she didn’t succeed, so I guess I didn’t need your protection, did I? I did just fine on my own. But maybe Justin could have used your help. Maybe when she couldn’t get me, she went after Justin instead. Those wounds on his hands— those could be from vampyre fangs, couldn’t they? You never touched them, did you? His hands? You never got any images off them?”

  “No, I was concentrating on his missing eyelashes. But what I got when I touched his eyes was a female energy, so yes, it could have been Maral. She grew up with a grandmother who’s psychic, and she believes in Voodoo and magick. She could have taken his lashes for something. I need to get back in there. Blood from his wounds had dripped on the carpet. If I touch those blood drops, we’ll know for sure.”

  Peter calmed down. Neither of us said another word about our feelings— or, as he would have it— my lack of feelings. It was as though we silently agreed to tiptoe around our relationship while we set about identifying Justin’s killer. That was fine with me. I meant what I said. I like having him in my life. I don’t want to lose him. I don’t know what that momentary discomfort was, when he was berating me for dealing with Maral alone, but I do like having him around.

  I left him in his room and walked down the hall to knock on Justin’s door again. The M.E. still hadn’t arrived. Officer Lowell let me in to look for the earring I told him I thought I’d lost when I was saying good-bye. All I had to do this time was wait for him to get his father on the phone so I could say hello.

  I pretended to search under the bed for the non-existent piece of jewelry. It took only a second to rest my hand on the bloodstains and see images of Justin’s last minutes. Dear sweet Andy was still talking to his dad. He never even noticed when I closed my eyes.

  33. PETER

  I’d only had five hours sleep. It would have been easy to blame my tirade at Ovsanna on fatigue, but that was the least of it. These feelings I’m having for her were making me crazy. This whole fucking romance was crazy. Who in hell falls in love with a vampyre? Who the fuck even knows they exist besides me? I was losing my mind.

  But I’ll be damned if I was going to lose my life. Not to one of her minions, that was for sure.

  Ovsanna went back to Justin’s room to talk her way into getting near his body again. I sat down on the floor with my back to the sofa and began meditating. I’d started out years ago doing a form of self-hypnosis to catch a little respite when I was working eighteen or twenty-hour days. Lately I’d been trying Mindful Meditation and I liked it better. It worked for me. I needed to calm down if I was going to spend the rest of the day with Ovsanna. Especially if Maral was in the picture.

  Ovsanna’s knocking on the door brought me out of it a few minutes later.

  “Maral was there, Peter. I’m sure of it,” she said. She stayed standing in the doorway. “When I touched the blood drops, I saw her hands on Justin’s eyes. She didn’t feed on him, I don’t think. His body didn’t look like she had. But I believe she took his eyelashes. She’s using them for something.”

  “Come on in,” I said, stepping back to let her pass. “I’m sorry I lost it. And I don’t want to talk about it.”

  She gave a quick, almost imperceptable nod of agreement, and continued talking. Not quite making eye contact. “We�
�ve got to find her. If she killed Justin, maybe she killed Derek, too. The timeline works out. She left my room right when you arrived to walk me downstairs. That was close to eleven o’clock. We still don’t have a time of death on Derek, but Connie was with him for breakfast before that, and then no one saw him the rest of the day. So it could have been Maral— anytime after she left my room.”

  “But why?” I asked. “If she’s not feeding on them, why would she kill them?” I shut my mouth then, quickly. Because my next question was going to be, “Because maybe she thinks you slept with them, too?” That would have been the end of whatever relationship we had. What the fuck, Peter. It’s none of your fucking business who she’s slept with. What’s going on with you? This woman— no, not a woman, remember— this VAMPYRE has me so rattled you’d think I still had acne. Shit. Just calm down.

  Ovsanna answered before I could put my foot in my mouth. “I don’t know. I don’t know if she did. She was upset with me when I said I wouldn’t end her life, and then you came to the door and she went nuts because I told her to leave. Accused me of choosing you over her.”

  “That’s motive to come after me, but not Derek or Justin. She had no reason to be jealous of them. Did she even know them?”

  “She was on the set with me when we filmed Satan Gone Bad, so yes, she’d met Justin; she’d seen us work together. She dealt with Derek more because of the series, but she didn’t know either of them, except in passing.”

  “Well, look, you said when she left your room yesterday that you thought you got rid of her for good. We’ve got to find her and hear what she has to say. Where did you send her? Where did you think she was going when she left you?”