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 batwinged 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.
"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
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.
"Remember, lick," she said. "Don't suck. You won't be able to take a full
fangs-on."
His throat pulsed, as he swallowed.
With a roar, the boy let the girl go. He had the eyes and the fangs, even more
than Dirk Diggler's Dracula. He moved
fast, a temporary newborn high on all the
extra senses and the sheer sense of power.
The dhampire put on wraparound mirror shades, ran razor-nailed hands
through his gelled hair and stalked off to haunt the La-La night. Within a couple of
hours, he would be a real live boy again. By that time, he could have got himself
into all manner of scrapes.
Nico squeezed shut her wound. Geneviève caught her pain. The silver knife
would be dangerous if it flaked in the cut. For a vampire, silver rot was like bad
gangrene.
"It's not my place to say anything," began Geneviève.
"Then don't," said Nico, though she clearly received what Geneviève was
thinking. "You're an elder. You can't know what it's like."
She had a flash that this newborn would never be old. What a pity.
"It's a simple exchange," said the girl. "Blood for blood. A gallon for a
scratch. The economy is in our favour. Just like the President says."
Geneviève joined Nico at the edge of the property.
"This vampire trip really isn't working for me," said Nico. "That boy, Julian,
will be warm again in the morning, mortal and with a reflection. And when he
wants to, he'll be a vampire. If I'm not here, there are others. You can score drac
on Hollywood Boulevard for twenty-five dollars a suck. Vile stuff, powdered, not
from the tap, but it works."
Geneviève tidied Nico's hair. The girl lay on her lap, sobbing silently. She
hadn't just lost blood.
This happened when you became an elder. You were mother and sister to the
whole world of the undead.
The girl's despair passed. Her eyes were bright, with Julian's blood.
"Let's hunt, Elder, like you did in Transylvania."
"I'm from France. I've never even been to Romania."
Now she mentioned it, that was odd. She'd been almost everywhere else.
Without consciously thinking of it, she must have been avoiding the supposed
homeland of the nosferatu.
"There are human cattle out there," said Nico. "I know all the clubs. X is
playing at the Roxy, if you like West Coast punk. And the doorman at After
Hours always lets us in, vampire girls. There are so few of us. We go to the head
of the line. Powers of fascination."
"Human cattle" was a real newborn expression. This close to dawn, Geneviève
was thinking of her cosy trailer and shutting out the sun, but Nico was a race-thedawn girl, staying out until it was practically light, bleeding her last as the red circle