The Vampire Sextette

by Edited by Marvin Kaye

  Could this Overlooker be another Manson? Crazy Charlie was a vampire hater, too, and used teenage girls as assassins. Everyone remembered the death of Sharon Tate, but the Manson Family had also destroyed a vampire elder, Count von Krolock, up on La Cienaga Drive, and painted bat symbols on the walls with his old blood. Barbie the Slayer was cutie-pie where the Family had been skaggy, but that could be a 1980s thing as opposed to a 1960s one.

  Geneviève knew she could take care of herself, but the people who talked to her might be in danger. She must mention it to Martin, who wasn't long on survival skills. He could at least scurry down to Mexico for a couple of months. In the meantime, she was still trying to earn her fifty dollars a day, so she returned Martin's call. The number he had left was (typically) a bar, and the growling man who picked up had a message for her, giving an address in the valley where she could find Martin.

  This late in the afternoon, the sun was low in the sky. She loved the long winter nights.

  In a twisttied plastic bag buried among the cleaning products and rags under her sink unit was a gun, a ladylike palm-size automatic. She considered fishing it out and transferring it to the Plymouth Fury but resisted the impulse. No sense in escalating. As yet, even the Overlooker didn't want her dead.

  That was not quite a comfort.

  The address was an anonymous house in an anonymous neighbourhood out in the diaspora-like sprawl of ranchos and villas and vistas, but there were more cars and vans outside than a single family would need. Either there was a party on, or this was a suburban commune. She parked on the street and watched for a moment. The lights from the windows and the patio were a few candles brighter than they needed to be. Cables snaked out of a side door and round to the backyard.

  She got out of the Plymouth and followed the hose-thick Cables, passing through a cultivated arbour into a typical yard space, with an oval pool, currently covered by a heavy canvas sheet that was damp where it rested on water, and a white wooden gazebo, made up with strands of dead ivy and at the centre of several beams of light. There were a lot of people around, but this was no party. She should have guessed: it was another film set. She saw lights on stands and a camera crew, plus the usual assortment of hangers-on, gophers, rubberneckers, fluffers, runners, and extras.

  This was more like a "proper" movie set than the scene she had found at Welles's bungalow, but she knew from the naked people in the gazebo that this was a far less proper movie. Again, she should have guessed. This was a Jack Martin lead, after all.

  "Are you here for 'Vampire Bitch Number Three'?"

  The long-haired, chubby kid addressing her wore a tie-dyed T-shirt and a fisherman's waistcoat, pockets stuffed with goodies. He carried a clipboard.

  Geneviève shook her head. She didn't know whether to be flattered or offended. Then again, in this town, everyone thought everyone else was an actor or actress. They were usually more or less right.

  She didn't like the sound of the part. If she had a reflection that caught on film and were going to prostitute herself for a skin flick, she would at least hold out for "Vampire Bitch Number One."

  "The part's taken, I'm afraid," said the kid, not exactly dashing her dreams of stardom. "We got Seka at the last minute."

  He nodded towards the gazebo, where three warm girls in pancake makeup hissed at a hairy young man, undoing his Victorian cravat and waistcoat.

  "I'm here to see Jack Martin?" she said.

  "Who?"

  "The writer?"

  She remembered Martin used pseudonyms for this kind of work, and spun off a description: "Salt-and-pepper beard, Midnight Cowboy jacket with the fringes cut off, smokes a lot, doesn't believe in positive thinking."

  The kid knew who she meant. "That's 'Mr. Stroker.' Come this way. He's in the kitchen, doing rewrites. Are you sure you're not here for a part? You'd make a groovy vampire chick."

  She thanked him for the compliment, and followed his lead through a mess of equipment to the kitchen, torn between staring at what was going on between the three girls and one guy in the gazebo and keeping her eyes clear. About half the crew were of the madly ogling variety, while the others were jaded enough to stick to their jobs and look at their watches as the shoot edged towards golden time.

  "Vampire Bitch Number Two, put more tongue in it," shouted an intense bearded man whose megaphone and beret marked him as the director. "I want to see fangs, Samantha. You've got a jones for that throbbing vein, you've got a real lust for blood. Don't slobber. That's in bad taste. Just nip nicely. That's it. That's colossal. That's the cream."

  "What is the name of this picture?" Geneviève asked.

  "Debbie Does Dracula," said the kid. "It's going to be a four-boner classic. Best thing Boris Adrian has ever shot. He goes for production values, not just screwing. It's got real crossover potential, as a 'couples' movie. Uh-oh, there's a gusher."

  "Spurt higher, Mr. Jeremy," shouted the director, Boris Adrian. "I need the arc to be highlit. Thank you, that's perfect. Seka, Samantha, Desiree, you can writhe in it if you like. That's outstanding. Now, collapse in exhaustion, Mr. Jeremy. That's perfect. Cut, and print."

  The guy in the gazebo collapsed in real exhaustion, and the girls called for assistants to wipe them off. Some of the crew applauded and congratulated the actors on their performances, which she supposed was fair enough. One of the "Vampire Bitches" had trouble with her false fang-teeth.

  The director got off his shooting stick and sat with his actors, talking motivation.

  The kid held a screen door open and showed her into the kitchen. Martin sat at a tiny table, cigarette in his mouth, hammering away at a manual typewriter. Another clipboard kid, a wide girl with a frizz of hair and Smiley badges fastening her overall straps, stood over him.

  "Gené, excuse me," said Martin. "I'll be through in a moment."

  Martin tore through three pages, working the carriage return like a gunslinger fanning a Colt, and passed them up to the girl, who couldn't read as fast as he wrote.

  "There's your Carfax Abbey scene," Martin said, delivering the last page.

  The girl kissed his forehead and left the kitchen.

  "She's in love with me."

  "The assistant?"

  "She's the producer, actually. Debbie W. Griffith. Had a monster hit distributing Throat Sprockets in Europe. You should see that. It's the first real adult film for the vampire market. Plays at midnight matinees."

  "She's D. W. Griffith," and you're… ?"

  Martin grinned, "Meet 'Bram Stroker.' "

  "And why am I here?"

  Martin looked around to make sure he wasn't overheard, and whispered, "This is it, this is his. Debbie's a front. This is un film de John Alucard."

  "It's not Orson Welles."

  "But it's a start."

  A dark girl, kimono loose, walked through the kitchen, carrying a couple of live white rats in one hand, muttering to herself about "the Master." Martin tried to say hello, but she breezed past, deeply into her role, eyes drifting. She lingered a moment on Geneviève, but wafted out onto the patio and was given a mildly sarcastic round of applause.

  "That's Kelly Nicholls," said Martin. "She plays Renfield. In this version, it's not flies she eats, not in the usual sense. This picture has a great cast: Dirk Diggler as Dracula, Jennifer Welles as Mina, Holly Body as Lucy, Big John Holmes as Van Helsing."

  "Why didn't you tell me about this yesterday?"

  "I didn't know then."

  "But you're the screenwriter. You can't have been hired and written the whole thing to be shot this afternoon."

  "I'm the rewriter. Even for the adult industry, their first pass at the script blew dead cats. It was called Dracula Sucks, and boy did it ever. They couldn't lick it, as it were. It's the subject, Dracula. You know what they say about the curse, the way it struck down Coppola in Romania. I've spent the day doing a page one rewrite."

  Someone shouted, "Quiet on set," and Martin motioned Geneviève to come outside with him to watch the
shooting.

  "The next scene is Dracula's entrance. He hauls the three vampire bitches—pardon the expression—off Jonathan and, ah, well, you can imagine, satiates them, before tossing them the baby in a bag."

  "I was just offered a role in the scene. I passed."

  Martin harrumphed. Unsure about this whole thing, she began to follow.

  A movement in an alcove distracted her. A pleasant-faced warm young man sat in there, hunched over a sideboard. He wore evening dress trousers and a bat-winged black cloak but nothing else. His hair was black and smoothed back, with a prominent widow's peak painted on his forehead. For a supposed vampire, he had a decent tan.

  He had a rolled-up ten-dollar bill stuck in his nose.

  A line of red dust was on the sideboard. He bent over and snuffed it up. She had heard of drac but never seen it.

  The effect on the young man was instant. His eyes shone like bloodied marbles. Fang-teeth shot out like switchblades.

  "Yeah, that's it," he said. "Instant vamp!"

  He flowed upright, unbending from the alcove, and slid across the floor on bare feet. He wasn't warm, wasn't a vampire, but something in between—a dhampire—that wouldn't last more than an hour.

  "Where's Dracula?" shouted Boris Adrian. "Has he got the fangs-on yet?"

  "I am Dracula," intoned the youth, as much to himself, convincing himself. "I am Dracula!"

  As he pushed past her, Geneviève noticed the actor's trousers were held together at the fly and down the sides by strips of Velcro. She could imagine why.

  She felt obscurely threatened. Drac—manufactured from vampire blood—was extremely expensive and highly addictive. In her own veins flowed the raw material of many a valuable fangs-on instant vamp fugue. In New York, where the craze came from, vampires had been kidnapped and slowly bled empty to make the foul stuff.

  Geneviève followed the dhampire star. He reached out his arms like a wingspread, cloak billowing, and walked across the covered swimming pool, almost flying, as if weightless, skipping over sagging puddles and, without toppling or using his hands, made it over the far edge. He stood at poolside and let the cloak settle on his shoulders.

  "I'm ready," he hissed through fangs.

  The three fake vampire girls in the gazebo huddled together, a little afraid. They weren't looking at Dracula's face, his hypnotic eyes and fierce fangs, but at his trousers. Geneviève realised there were other properties of drac that she hadn't read about in the newspapers.

  The long-haired kid who had spoken to her was working a pulley. A shiny cardboard full moon rose above the gazebo. Other assistants held bats on fishing lines. Boris Adrian nodded approval at the atmosphere.

  "Well, Count, go to it," the director ordered. "Action."

  The camera began to roll as Dracula strode up to the gazebo, cloak rippling. The girls writhed over the prone guy, Jonathan Harker, and awaited the coming of their dark prince.

  "This man is mine," said Dracula, in a Californian drawl that owed nothing to Transylvania. "As you all are mine, you vampire bitches, you horny vampire bitches."

  Martin silently recited the lines along with the actor, eyes alight with innocent glee.

  "You never love," said the least-fanged of the girls, who had short blonde hair, "you yourself have never loved."

  "That is not true, as you know well and as I shall prove to all three of you. In succession, and together. Now."

  The rip of Velcro preceded a gasp from the whole crew. Dirk Diggler's famous organ was bloodred and angry. She wondered if he could stab a person with it and suck their blood, or was that just a rumour like the Tijuana werewolf show Martin spent his vacations trying to track down.

  The "vampire bitches" huddled in apparently real terror.

  "Whatever he's taking, I want some of it," breathed Martin.

  Later, in an empty all-night diner, Martin was still excited about Debbie Does Dracula. Not really sexually, though she didn't underestimate his prurience, but mostly high on having his words read out, caught on film. Even as "Bram Stroker," he had pride in his work.

  "It's a stopgap till the real projects come through," he said, waving a deadly cigarette. "But it's cash in hand, Gené. Cash in hand. I don't have to hock the typewriter. Debbie wants me for the sequel they're making next week, Taste the Cum of Dracula, but I may pass. I've got something set up at Universal, near as damn it. A remake of Buck Privates, with Belushi and Dan Aykroyd. It's between me and this one other guy, Lionel Fenn, and Fenn's a drac-head from the East with a burnout date stamped on his forehead. I tell you, Gené, it's adios to "Bram Stroker" and "William Forkner" and "Charles Dickings." You'll be my date for the premiere, won't you? You pretty up good, don't you? When the name Jack Martin means something in this town, I want to direct."

  He was tripping on dreams. She brought him down again.

  "Why would John Alucard be in bed with Boris Adrian?" she asked.

  "And Debbie Griffith," he said. "I don't know. There's an invisible barrier between adult and legit. It's like a parallel world. The adult industry has its own stars and genres and awards shows. No one ever crosses. Oh, some of the girls do bit parts. Kelly was in The Toolbox Murders, with Cameron Mitchell."

  "I missed that one."

  "I didn't. She was the chickie in the bath, who gets it with a nail gun. Anyway, that was a fluke. You hear stories that Stallone made a skin flick once, and that some on-the-skids directors take paying gigs under pseudonyms."

  "Like 'Bram Stroker'?"

  Martin nodded, in his flow. "But it's not an apprenticeship, not really. Coppola shot nudies, but that was different. Just skin, no sex. Tame now. Nostalgia bait. You've got to trust me, Gené, don't tell anyone, and I mean not anyone, that I'm 'Bram Stroker.' It's a crucial time for me, a knife edge between the big ring and the wash-out ward. I really need this Buck Privates deal. If it comes to it, I want to hire you to scare off Fenn. You do hauntings, don't you?"

  She waved away his panic, her fingers drifting through his nicotine cloud.

  "Maybe Alucard wants to raise cash quickly?" she suggested.

  "Could be. Though the way Debbie tells it, he isn't just a sleeping partner. He originated the whole idea, got her and Boris together, borrowed Dirk from Jack Homer, even—and I didn't tell you this—supplied the bloody nose candy that gave Dracula's performance the added frisson."

  It was sounding familiar.

  "Did he write the script?" she asked. "The first script?"

  "Certainly no writer did. It might be Mr. A. There was no name on the title page."

  "It's not a porno movie he wants, not primarily," she said. "It's a Dracula movie. Another one. Yet another one."

  Martin called for a coffee refill. The ancient, slightly mouldy character who was the sole staff of the Nighthawks Diner shambled over, coffee sloshing in the glass jug.

  "Look at this guy," Martin said. "You'd swear he was a goddamned reanimated corpse. No offence, Gene, but you know what I mean. Maybe he's a dhamp. I hear they zombie out after a while, after they've burned their bat cells."

  Deaf to the discussion, the shambler sloshed coffee in Martin's mug. Here, in Jack Martin heaven, there were infinite refills. He exhaled contented plumes of smoke.

  "Jack, I have to warn you. This case might be getting dangerous. A friend of mine was killed last night, as a warning. And the police like me for it. I can't prove anything, but it might be that asking about Alucard isn't good for your health. Still, keep your ears open. I know about two John Alucard productions now, and I'd like to collect the set. I have a feeling he's a one-note musician, but I want that confirmed."

  "You think he only makes Dracula movies?"

  "I think he only makes Dracula."

  She didn't know what she meant by that, but it sounded horribly right.

  There was night enough left after Martin had peeled off home to check in with the client. Geneviève knew Welles would still be holding court at four in the morning.

  He was running footage.<
br />
  "Come in, come in," he boomed.

  Most of the crew she had met the night before were strewn on cushions or rugs in the den, along with a few newcomers, movie brats and law professors and a very old, very grave black man in a bright orange dashiki. Gary, the cameraman, was working the projector.

  They were screening the scene she had seen shot, projecting the picture onto the tapestry over the fireplace. Van Helsing tormented by vampire symbols. It was strange to see Welles's huge, bearded face, the luminous skull, the flapping bat and the dripping dagger slide across the stiff, formal image of the mediaeval forest scene.

  Clearly, Welles was in midperformance, almost holding a dialogue with his screen self, and wouldn't detach himself from the show so she could report her preliminary findings to him.

  She found herself drifting into the yard. There were people there, too. Nico, the vampire starlet, had just finished feeding, and lay on her back, looking up at the stars, licking blood from her lips and chin. She was a messy eater. A too-pretty young man staggered upright, shaking his head to dispel dizziness. His clothes were Rodeo Drive, but last year's in a town where last week was another era. She didn't have to sample Nico's broadcast thoughts to put him down as a rich kid who had found a new craze to blow his trust-fund money on, and her crawling skin told her it wasn't a sports car.

  "Your turn," he said to Nico, nagging.

  She kept to the shadows. Nico had seen her, but her partner was too preoccupied to notice anyone. The smear on his neck gave Geneviève a little prick of thirst.

  Nico sat up with great weariness, the moment of repletion spoiled. She took a tiny paring knife from her clutch purse. It glinted, silvered. The boy sat eagerly beside her and rolled up the left sleeve of her loose muslin blouse, exposing her upper arm. Geneviève saw the row of striped scars she had noticed last night. Carefully, the vampire girl opened a scar and let her blood trickle. The boy fixed his mouth over the wound. She held his hair in her fist.