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RAMONNE
THE RETURN OF THE VAMPIRE OF SIAM
By
Jim Newport
“I saw him in the bar at Trader Vic’s…. and his hair was perfect.”
Warren Zevon
A year after he became embroiled in a seductive web of blood-letting, sexual excess, and mind-altering time shifting with a 175 year-old Vampire, Martin Larue returns to his adopted home of Bangkok a changed man. With his shaved head and orange robe, he is barely recognized by the doorman to his luxury apartment.
Endowed with a fortune so vast he would need eternal life to spend it all, Martin had almost allowed himself to be transformed. When he came to his senses and realized it was eternal damnation that awaited him, he joined forces with an American Vampire-hunter to destroy the beast he had once called his friend.
When the bitter smoke from the Vampire’s funeral pyre had finally dissipated, Daeng, his girlfriend for five years, was gone. She’d had enough – enough of his patronizing attitude, his ambivalence, his infidelity and certainly enough of the madness that had allowed him to consort with a Vampire. Martin left the city and his decadent life-style and traveled upcountry to study the Dharma of the great teacher Buddha. For twelve months he had studied the middle way. Learned the noble truths. Practiced the three fundamental principles - Not to do any evil. To cultivate good. To purify the mind.
His transcendent nirvana is shattered by the appearance at his apartment of a Police Lieutenant who seeks his help in tracking down a killer – a killer who drains the blood of his victims.
In a cave on the shore of Cambodia, Ramonne, the vampire, has been reborn also. A local Shaman had become aware of his existence and had procured just enough of his ashes from his fiery demise, to concoct a mystical potion that when injected into an infant bat, metamorphosed into an adult male vampire.
When his transformation was complete, he was taken from the cave by Kanchana, a wealthy young woman who is terrified of a ravenous disease that has progressed through all female members of her family in the past fifty years. Her search for any way to avoid the plague she would soon succumb to led her to the Shaman. He made her the transporter of the infant bat with the altered DNA with the promise that the reborn Vampire could offer her the only chance for salvation – gift of eternal life.
Ramonne complies and for awhile there are a pair of Vampires stalking the shadows of Bangkok. But Kanchana turns remorseful and refuses to kill. She moans for her soul-mate, Ramonne, who has abandoned her to pursue the quest for his own identity.
Martin is reunited with Areeyah, the sultry daughter of the his and Ramonne’s former nemesis Boonsong, and through their common suffering a romance is born. They join the new Police Lieutenant to help find what Martin prays is not a Vampire. However Martin soon learns the truth.
Ramonne’s path is forked as he stumbles into the world of Chinese ganglord Ping Narong and becomes a highly-paid hitman. His victims are nefarious and hard to get to. Not a problem for Ramonne. Meanwhile, he seeks the Shaman as a source for answers to questions about as his powers. The blind Shaman gives Ramonne ancient texts in Braille which pose no problem for the Vampire. His studies lead him to believe that he can offer Kanchana a return to the mortal world.
Ping gives Ramonne an assignment that involves tracking down an Arab terrorist who has entered Thailand through Malaysia to organize a bomb attack on one of Bangkok’s infamous entertainment zones. Ping has major investments in the zones as well as involvement with prostitution, drug smuggling, and gambling – he figures this would be bad for business. Ramonne stalks the Arab, Mestaphel, and is appalled to learn of his plan to strap bombs to teenagers and send them into Patpong on a suicide mission.
Martin meets Kanchana on her suicide watch atop a lonely bridge and faces the fact that Ramonne has returned. Once again he reluctantly leads the search for his destruction, while Ramonne tries to thwart the bombing.
Reborn, evolved, and enlightened – Martin and Ramonne’s destinies seem inextricably entwined.
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