Make Me Dead: A Vampyres of Hollywood Mystery Read online

  Praise for LOVE BITES, the SECOND Vampyres of Hollywood book:

  “Charming! The second book by actress turned writer Barbeau is an entertaining ride into the adventures of a vampire scream queen and a police detective. The story’s full of fun and fantasy as the duo battles to build a relationship in the face of werewolf attacks and jealousy. You’ll love the references to much-remembered names from Hollywood, and the supporting cast will make you laugh out loud.”

  —The Romantic Times

  “The fast and furious final pages will leave fans hoping for a third installment.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “A fast, funny, sexy take on Hollywood vampires. Her vampires are not only divine, they’re famous!”

  —Anne Stuart, New York Times bestselling author of Fire and Ice

  MAKE ME DEAD

  A Vampyres of Hollywood novel

  BY

  ADRIENNE BARBEAU

  booksBnimble Publishing

  New Orleans, La.

  Make Me Dead

  Copyright © 2015 by Adrienne Barbeau

  All rights are reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  eBook ISBN: 978-0-9861783-5-1

  www.booksbnimble.com

  First booksBnimble electronic publication: May, 2015

  Digital Editions (epub and mobi formats) produced by Booknook.biz

  Contents

  Start Reading

  Full Table of Contents

  1. OVSANNA

  I could hear the diva screaming from across the ballroom. Not because I can hear sounds from miles away, which I can, but because she was so incredibly loud. She was raging at her manager for allowing the show’s promoter to seat her next to her soon-to-be ex-husband. The doors hadn’t opened yet and, although most of my actors’ tables had been set up, there was only a scattering of people in the room— her soon-to-be ex-husband not among them. Her voice echoed off the walls like shrapnel striking a tank.

  The diva’s name is Annie Ross. From my point of view she’s barely a divette— just past puberty and way too young to already have attitude. Also too young to appreciate her namesake. I’d suggested she change her name when she auditioned for me, but this girl could have cared less about co-opting a Scottish jazz legend. This Annie Ross is now co-starring with her soon-to-be ex-husband in a television series I produce for A & E, called Mid-Evil. Her ego has grown in direct proportion to the show’s ratings. If she doesn’t get her antics under control, she’ll be found dead in the king’s castle by the end of the season. It won’t be pretty.

  Neither was the outfit she was wearing. Torn fishnet stockings, a black corset, and white denim short shorts that barely managed to cover her rather skinny ass. Her clothes made it difficult to take seriously the pain underlying her rage. Funny, I’d never noticed her ass’s non-existence in the show’s fifteenth century costumes. I wondered if wardrobe was padding her.

  “Are you kidding me?” she railed. She’d knocked over the table next to her, and it was lying on the ground looking like a beached turtle with its four legs in the air. They were longer than a turtle’s legs, but you get the idea. Eight-by-ten head shots of Derek Connors— the soon-to-be-ex husband in question— littered the floor. “I don’t want that, like, cheating turd in the same room I’m in! Where’s his girlfriend’s table, huh? Where’s the old slut sitting? Like, go put him next to her! They can drool all over each other in front of their fans— like, if they still have any.”

  I didn’t blame her for the tantrum. The tantrum I understood. I blamed her for the lousy grammar. There wasn’t much I could do about it. Her husband, Derek Connors, also one of my stars in Mid-Evil and someone I liked a lot when he wasn’t being a douche, had been all over the tabloids for the past six months, blatantly screwing Constance Theodopolis, the forty-year-old sex symbol who plays the Queen Mother in the series. Derek plays her son, so you can imagine the headlines. If the convention promoter didn’t have the sense to keep Annie and Derek separated, Annie’s manager should have. Especially since Constance was set up to sign in the room next door.

  Annie saw me and came charging over, her manager running after her.

  Monk stepped between us. He’s the man I’d hired six months ago to replace Maral McKenzie, my former assistant, sometime lover, and food-source. Monk has no knowledge of my true nature; hence he’s neither a lover nor a food-source, but a capable assistant and valuable bodyguard, which Maral was not. He’s a Japanese Sumo wrestler from Mongolia. At least he was until the Japan Sumo Association denied him its highest title for being too individualistic. Something about a gig moonlighting on NHK as a TV pitchman for a popular brand of bubble tea. He’s 6'3", 280 lbs. Slimmed down since he retired. Annie had to lean to the side to see around him.

  “Ovsanna, you’ve got to, like, do something. If I have to see that bastard’s face for the next two days, I’ll, like, kill him before the con is over. Stab him in the back like he did me. Only I’ll use a real knife.”

  “I’m sure it won’t be a problem, Annie,” I said. “But I’m just the guest of honor here; I’m not running this thing.” I turned to her manager. “I know this is the first horror convention you’ve booked Annie into, Gerard, but it’s not any different from taking care of her on the set. It’s your job to make sure she’s happy with everything. Make sure she’s got black and silver pens, plenty of water, and some hand sanitizer. Make sure you’ve got cash to make change if the fans give you big bills. Does she have enough photos to sign; is her show merchandise on her table; are her name and credits spelled correctly on the banner? Is she sitting next to the estranged husband she’d like to strangle? Because if she is, you’d better get one of them moved. Now. I suggest you get out to the lobby— sooner rather than later— definitely before Derek shows up— and find Matty. Tell him Annie’s not happy and that’s making me unhappy. Have him get his volunteers to set her up in a curtained booth at least three rows away from where he’s got Derek, on the opposite side of the room and away from any of the ballroom doors. That way they’ll never run into each other on the way to the bathroom— and Annie won’t be quite as tempted to kill him. Capeesh?”

  I’m not Italian, but Matty the promoter is, and listening to him talk since I’d arrived here in New Orleans was beginning to color my language. Like being with Scipione Borghese in 1907 when he won the Peking to Paris race. In those days, I was rattling off Italian like Sophia Loren in Two Women.

  By the time I’d finished my speech, Annie had calmed down. She and Gerard headed off to find the promoter and I walked towards the makeshift stage where I’d be signing autographs in a while. Peter and his mother were waiting there by the stairs.

  Peter is Peter King, a Beverly Hills Police Detective on temporary medical leave while he recovers from a Bengal tiger attack at a New Year’s Eve party gone terribly wrong. That’s not the whole story, of course, but since the truth involves Orson Welles, Charlie Chaplin, and Mary Pickford— all assumedly dead, but in reality, not— no one would believe it anyway.

  Peter is all the things you want in a Beverly Hills Detective: intelligent, dogged, determined, and definitely easy to look at. Sort of a cross between Bruce Springsteen and all those pictures of Christ you see on funeral cards. But Christ is usually blond. Peter’s not. He’s got black hair and hazel eyes. He makes me laugh. Not an easy thing to do.

  I am Ovsanna Moore. Majority shareholder and head of Anticipation Studios. Writer, producer, and star of 17 blockbuster horror films and a few that went strai
ght to video. Actually, make that 18 blockbusters, what with the success of my latest release, Satan Gone Bad. Publicizing the film is part of the reason I agreed to let Matty Ianello mount this convention— NOLA Ghoulfest III— with me as the guest of honor, along with the actors from my films and the TV series I’m producing. All the money from the sales of my autographed photos and DVDs goes to the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society.

  Because I do have more than a passing interest in blood.

  In the film business I’m known as a Scream Queen. In my private life, known only by my attorney, my former assistant Maral, my clan (Orson and company), and now, Peter King, I am Ovsanna Hovannes Garebedian— Chatelaine of the Clan Dakhanavar of the First Bloodline.

  The most powerful vampyre in Hollywood.

  On screen and off.

  * * *

  We had an hour before the doors opened to the people who’d paid extra for VIP tickets. I could hear them standing in line in the hallway, out through the lobby, and along the side of the hotel to the back parking lot. Tickets for my personalized, autographed photo had been pre-sold online, upwards of 3000 of them, which meant the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society was already richer by $85,000. If those buyers wanted an additional photo-op with me, that figure could double. I’d be greeting fans and signing non-stop for the next three days, but it was worth it. I didn’t mind at all, as long as I could avoid shaking hands. Physical contact with strangers leaves me bombarded with unwanted impressions of the persons involved, and although horror fans are the best fans ever, I don’t need to know what they’re doing when they’re not watching movies.

  I do love talking to them, though. Hearing what the fans have to say about how my films impacted their lives. The couple who fell in love watching I Scream on their first date. The fellow whose parents took him to see Demons in Distress when he was five and he wouldn’t leave the theater until he could watch the next showing. The Baptist, who wasn’t allowed to see movies at all when he was growing up, who finally snuck out to see Dying To Meet You because he thought it was an educational film on good manners. He had another think coming, that’s for sure. The fans really are fun to talk to.

  Monk left me to meet with the hotel manager. He needed to check the names of the registered guests against the list he’d compiled of my would-be “stalkers”. It’s a hazard of celebrity, especially for those of us who specialize in genre films. I have a few who are fairly benign, like the mixed martial artist who has a poster of one of my films tattooed on his right calf. He thinks having my breasts inked across his ankle bone helps him win matches. Well… whatever works.

  Over the years I’ve had my share of nutcases. Ever since the thirties, when I came to Hollywood as my grandmother to work in silent films, and then the sixties, when the town embraced me as my mother, Anna Moore, I’ve had fans who either wanted to kill me or make love to me. It’s the power of the celluloid fantasies we create.

  Like the man from Missouri who believed I was his psychiatrist and that I’d told him to leave his wife so that we could live together in southern France. He had a villa picked out at the foot of a volcano there. If I didn’t meet him at noon at LAX, he was going to detonate the microchip he’d implanted in his earlobe and blow the entire Lufthansa baggage claim to bits. I couldn’t write this kind of stuff if I had to.

  He got as far as the Farmer’s Market at The Grove before the detectives I’d hired escorted him to the psych ward at UCLA.

  There’ve been others; in the last few years the messages have come in via my website, my Facebook fan page, my Twitter account, LinkedIn, Instagram, Snapchat— you name the social media platform and there’s bound to be a few crazies posting threats or lewd comments or schizophrenic ramblings meant only for Scream Queen Ovsanna Moore. Monk keeps track of the names attached to the posts. He keeps an eye out for those people whenever I’m in public. Right now he was keeping an eye out for a Dr. Severance Taylor, a Bea Summers, and Mr. Nado Goren, Esq. Of course, rarely does anyone post using his real name, but it’s an added bit of security. He’s asked me many times if I want him to use the IT team at the studio to investigate further into the online identities. I tell him I can take care of myself.

  I don’t tell him how.

  I crossed the room to greet Peter and his mother. She was wearing an ivory-colored silk blouse and lilac pants and she looked lovely.

  “Hi, you two. How was the drive?” I leaned forward to kiss Angela on the cheek. She’d treated me like family since the night Peter brought me home for Christmas Eve dinner. I still didn’t know what she thought of her son spending time with a movie star who she thinks is at least 10 years older than he. Can you imagine if she knew the truth? “Hello, Ma, this is Anna Moore’s daughter, but all that memorabilia you have from Anna Moore’s career? Well, Ovsanna actually was Anna Moore before she became Ovsanna, and then she was Anna Moore’s mother before that, and a whole bunch of other personas going back 450 years. So she’s a bit older than you think. She’s from Armenia, by the way. She’s a vampyre.”

  “Ovsanna! It’s so good to see you!” Angela grabbed me by the arms and pulled me in for yet another kiss on the cheek. I concentrated on blocking the images— Peter as a baby screaming for a diaper change— and whatever else she was thinking about. “Let me tell you, I didn’t think we’d ever get here. This is the last time I’m driving to one of these things; I don’t care how much over-sized luggage I have to pay for on a plane.”

  Angela had started collecting movie memorabilia from the stars she fed on the sets of their films. Her company, King’s Catering, was so popular that Bradley Cooper and Matt Damon requested her in their contracts. She gave the casts great food and great service. In return, they signed all kinds of collectables for her. When eBay came along, what had started out as a hobby became a second source of income, and in the last couple of years she’d been selling on the convention circuit as well. She’d managed to buy herself a red sportscar with her earnings.

  “Come on, Ma,” Peter laughed, “think of all the money you’re going to make selling that junk we brought with us.”

  Peter and I didn’t hug or kiss, just grinned at each other. Even though the murder case that brought us together had been solved, Peter wasn’t comfortable with anyone in the department knowing we were… what? An item? Dating? All over each other whenever we had some privacy?

  Peter had uncovered my secret when my clan and I had to battle the ancient Night Hag for control of Los Angeles. He’d saved my life; offering me his blood when I was at my weakest, and vaporizing Lilith and her minions in a massive explosion.

  Then he’d asked me out.

  We’ve been circling each other ever since. And I’d been looking forward to spending time with him away from L.A. New Orleans can be such a romantic place if you’re there with the right person.

  “Ma’s booth is in the vendors’ room,” he said. “And SuzieQ is in there, too. She’s got Edwin Edwards and Anthony Wiener with her. Do you have time to say hello before they open the doors?” He looked as edible as ever (although maybe that’s not a phrase I should use in public) wearing a black Ed Sheeran paw print t-shirt, black 3X1 jeans, and John Varvatos boots. You can’t spend as many years as I have walking the red carpet without getting to know your designers.

  “Sure. Let’s go,” I said. “You can take Monk’s place and play bodyguard for a minute. They started lining up in the halls two hours ago; it must look like an Hieronymus Bosch triptych out there by now.”

  Peter cleared a path down the hallway and Angela and I followed him into the adjoining room. It wasn’t easy, what with bodies spread all over the floor, waiting to get in. But Angela didn’t let that distract her.

  “Don’t you dare call my goodies ‘junk’, Peter. You want a smack? Just because you don’t drool over Armin Shimerman’s Quark ears or the Speedo that Channing Tatum wore when he played Ovsanna’s pool man in Drown With Love. That doesn’t mean there aren’t fans out there who’ll fight over the stuff on my table.
How do you think I paid for my Corvette?”

  I laughed. “Do you really have that Speedo, Angela? It must be in pieces. I remember shredding it with my teeth in the scene when I was going down on Chan—” I caught my tongue. She was Peter’s mother, after all.

  Fortunately, she didn’t hear me over the noise in the vendors’ room. It was a second ballroom, the size of the first, but without the stage, and it was jammed with sellers yelling greetings to each other as they tore open boxes, assembled wire display racks, and hung black curtains around their booths. One vendor had set up a camping tent to use as a dressing room. He was selling Chucky the Clown costumes, along with Beetlejuice, Freddy Krueger, and various vampyres and ghouls. I could have told him a thing or two about his vampyre attire, but why bother? When Tod Browning (also my clan) made Dracula in 1931, I worked with him to create the myths about us that the world has come to accept as fact. And believe me, they are myths. The last cape I wore was a $25,000 sable designed by St. Laurent. Allergic to garlic? Come on, Ambrogio was Italian, for God’s sake. But… better to let my kind be known for our fangs and fingernails than expose our real truths.

  And contrary to legend, we don’t have a problem with sunlight, either. We don’t tan easily, but we definitely don’t burn.

  “Here it is, Ovsanna.” Angela was holding a glass-covered shadow box. “I had to frame the pieces, but I got Channing to sign the crotch. So don’t be calling his junk ‘junk’, Peter. And help me set up your dad’s chess boards, would you, please?”

  Peter’s father took up woodworking when he retired from the LAPD. He makes the most remarkable chess pieces with likenesses of Hollywood stars. I’d bought a set from him the first night we met. It has Peter Lorre as a rook and Orson as the king. My ‘mother’, Anna Moore, is the queen. Angela took special orders from fans who wanted sets made of their favorite movies. The one Peter was unpacking was Aliens. Lance Henriksen makes the perfect bishop.