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THE VAMPIRE OF SIAM
By
Jim Newport
Live Dangerously, make friends with a Vampire.
Martin Larue, wealthy beyond measure, is a wandering expat, who has made Bangkok his sometime home. His days are spent dabbling in cinema journalism and enjoying the finer things in life. But he is jaded and bored and his editor at the Bangkok Times thinks he needs some excitement. He sends him out with the police to dig amongst the dirt beneath Bangkok’s façade. His guide is the enigmatic Lt.-Colonel Boonsong. The world-weary Martin finds his senses jolted when he unwittingly accompanies police to a murder scene at the centuries-old Hernando Cemetery. Before he is led away he glimpses the body of a girl with dyed-hair sprawled naked across the cold stone bier in the center of the tomb.
Reluctantly Martin uncovers a serial killer in the City of Angeles. His article is front-page news and leads to a visit from the murderer himself - a 175-year-old French vampire. Ramonne Delacroix is sophisticated, worldly, charming and dangerous. At first determined to kill him, Ramonne finds in Martin a kindred spirit. An unlikely bond is formed as Martin becomes intoxicated by the vampire's power to reveal the past glories of Siam and Angkor Wat that he has witnessed (Ramonne was originally a French explorer before being attacked by a Chinese Vampire in 1860.) He divulges to Martin that he has been paying off Boonsong to carry on his bloodsucking activities without interruption. Martin agrees to transfer his wealth to the vampire for the privilege of following him on his sex and death binges in Bangkok.
On the verge of crossing to the dark side himself, Martin is betrayed and plunged into a mortal hell. Waking in Boonsong’s jail, he finally sees things clearly and joins forces with Jonathan Peyton, self-styled vampire-hunter who has been tracking Ramonne since he killed his beautiful wife Jennifer in Pattaya on their honeymoon. He has been preparing for his encounter and is outfitted with tranquilizer darts and riot guns to take down his prey and drag him to hallowed ground. In a botched attempt by he & Martin to capture Ramonne in a seedy bordello, Jonathan is bitten. Unfortunately, he suffered a bite from the vampire before and is now turning into a vampire himself.
With time running out for Jonathan, he and Martin track the vampire to the opening of a huge nightclub. Ramonne has been stalking the owner’s girlfriend - the sexy young socialite Areeyah “Ya Ya” Boonsong, the Colonel’s daughter. In a fiery shoot-out the vampire hunters lose their prey and Ramonne kidnaps the girl, Yaya.
Martin & Jonathan are brought to Boonsong who reveals a ransom note from Ramonne demanding a meeting – alone – at the fabled Temple Of Dawn. Here the police Colonel must exchange his life for his daughter’s. The vampire hunters hatch a plan to bring Ramonne down. In a spectacular endgame Jonathan – now a fully-formed Vampire – battles Ramonne in an aerial duel up on the 200 foot temple tower on the banks of the Chao Phyra river. Ultimately Jonathan suffers defeat and Ramonne encounters Martin & Boonsong. Ramonne dispatches Boonsong to hell with great pleasure. He then turns to Martin. Martin wields a shotgun, potentially an instrument of destruction for the vampire, for if he is decapitated on hallowed ground – his body will incinerate with the rise of the sun. Wat Arun, the Temple of Dawn is indeed hallowed ground.
An exotic tale of lust, greed and the supernatural, “The Vampire Of Siam” follows the strange path that a powerful friendship takes as it unravels, and Martin Larue learns a lesson in the preciousness of life's every moment – from a vampire.
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