WARNING: ALL MAJOR EPISODE SPOILERS WILL FOLLOW!
When we return, Sally is sitting at a window in one of the rooms smoking a cigarette. We can see that she’s busy sowing a new body into the center of the mattress, which reveals that she was the one responsible for the last one that popped up and scared the two Swedish girls. Sally snuffs out her cigarette and returns to sowing the body in and we see that it’s Gabriel, the guy raped by Drilldo-Dick in the previous episode. He’s in some sort of limbo state because as Sally kisses him, he gasps for life again and tells her “I’m not free.” Sally says that it’s his fault that he’s in the situation that he’s in and that Gabriel cannot cheat death. She pushes his head into the mattress and finishes sowing him in for good and is interrupted by screams coming from the radiator. Sally goes to one of the secret rooms and we see that it’s Vendela, one of the Swedish girls, and the vampire children are draining blood from her wrists. Iris is there and Sally tells her to shut Vendela up, but it’s too late. The vampire children say she tastes gross and Iris confirms it’s because the girl just died. Iris, Liz Taylor and The Maid put Vendela’s body on a rolling table and take her into a room with a garbage shoot and send her down the hatch. She lands with a thump among other dead bodies. Later, the vampire children are being drained of their blood into some sort scientific experiment and Iris brings the vials to The Countess, who drinks them. Iris wants to see Donovan, her son, but The Countess dismisses her. Later, we see The Countess doesn’t want to miss the opening of an Art Show, but Donovan just wants to stay in with some Netflix and Chill because they don’t have the money to buy anything right now. The Countess says it’s not about the art, it’s about the hunt… so she gets dressed and goes without him.
The following day, Alex is treating a sick child at his home. The mother ponders what the diagnosis could be since she read about all the symptoms online, to which Alex warns her not to do that because it’ll drive you crazy. Alex wishes the boy well and takes the mother into the hallway so she can tell her that the child has measles. Alex is pissed because a simple vaccination could have stopped him from getting this sick, but the mother counters that it was her decision after she read about all the theories online about vaccinations making children worse. Alex says there’s so many things out there trying to harm children, you still have to try your best to protect them from some things. The mother wants to know what medication to give her son, but Alex says there is no treatment – she just has to make sure his temperature doesn’t spike again and wait it out. When we see her husband, John, he’s sleeping in room #64 of Hotel Cortez. Electronics turn on and off by themselves and he’s suddenly ripped from slumber when he gets a glimpse of Drilldo-Dick. It was only a dream. He gets up to wash his face and finds a deceased man and woman having sex in the bathroom. It was only a dream, too. Then he sees Holden in the hallway again and runs after him, but Holden disappears. John ends up searching by the bar and runs into Sally and Liz Taylor. Sally warns John that Hotel Cortex can drive you crazy especially between the hours of 2:00am and 3:00am. Sally and John start to have some sort of a friendship over nonalcoholic drinks and he divulges that he went a little crazy after a particularly sad crime scene and the next time he saw Holden was the day he was kidnapped. Sometime later, John is at work and receives mail from Hotel Cortex. He panics and thinks it’s a bomb, but the squad finds it’s only a box containing a blood soaked award.
Will Drake, the new owner of Hotel Cortex, is throwing a high class fashion show and we get to meet one of his friends, Claudia (played by Naomi Campbell). Will also meets John and his daughter, Scarlett. John doesn’t want to stick around for the fashion show, but Will assures him that it’s child friendly and introduces Scarlett to his son, Lachlan. Just before the fashion show Sally has a break down because she’s not allowed in Hotel Cortez because they think she’s a hooker and not a resident. The fashion show begins as planned and The Countess and Donovan show up and put everyone to shame with their outfits. Tristan (played by Finn Wittrock), one of the models, is struggling with a cocaine addiction and has to be rushed onto the catwalk. He’s clearly the best in the show and he catches the eye of The Countess. Meanwhile, Scarlett and Lachlan sneak off and Lachlan shows her the coffins belonging to the vampire children. Back at the fashion show, Tristan gets into a fist fight with one of the audience members and is only stopped after making eye contact with The Countess. Donovan wants to know “what the Hell was that about?” and The Countess says that Tristan is full of rage, “I can smell it.” Backstage, Will warns Tristan to get his shit together, but Tristan cuts his face open on purpose so he can’t do his next showing and heads off in search of more cocaine.
Tristan ends up breaking into the room belonging to The Countess and Donovan and he is caught by Donovan. Donovan isn’t pleased and warns him to leave, but Tristan is reckless and gets into a fistfight with Donovan, who easily overpowers him due to his strength as a vampire. Donovan is about to choke him to death until The Countess stops him. Tristan runs away and takes the elevator to a darkened floor of the hotel. He sees a food cart and helps himself, but throws up when he realizes all the food has maggots in it. He stumbles down the hallway and finds a room with power linked to it and searches the room for cocaine as well. Then a very classy, very pale man named James March comes out to greet him. James March says he sees a lot of himself in the druggy before The Maid comes in with a woman that’s tied up and throws her on the bed. Tristan says he’s not into bondage right before March shoots the woman in the head. Tristan runs out into the hallway and makes a break for the stairs as The Maid comments that she’ll get fresh linens right away. Scarlett runs away from home to visit her father and goes back to see the vampire coffins, which are now empty. She wanders around the hotel, discovers the secret hatch, and finds Holden in the game room playing with the other vampire children. She asks if Holden still remembers who she is, and he does, but Scarlett is confused as to why he hasn’t grown at all. She takes out her camera phone to take a picture with her brother, but just as she snaps the picture Holden tries to bite her. Scarlett runs away and bumps into Sally, who has bloody teeth in her mouth, before leaving the hotel.
When Scarlett makes it home, the cops are swarming the police and are trying to locate her as a missing persons. John and Alex are overjoyed to see her safe, thinking the killer snatched her. She tells her parents that she went to Hotel Cortez on her own and ran into Holden. John has a breakdown, screaming that Holden is dead and never coming back, which causes another rift between him and Alex. Scarlett leaves her phone behind after heading up to her room and John discovers a blurry photo of Scarlett and Holden in the game room. Back at Hotel Cortez, The Countess has just turned Tristan into a vampire and he’s asking why he doesn’t have fangs. The Countess says, “We don’t bite. We cut.” The Countess starts giving him tips on how to pick healthy victims and says that the only thing that can undue him is his own recklessness; most of all, never fall in love. The Countess gives a little bit of her backstory, stating that she was born in 1904 and was the queen of the disco in the 70’s. Donovan discovers the new lovers in bed together and can’t believe she turned Tristan, saying “he won’t last a week.” The Countess says she doesn’t want this to end badly before proceeding to break up with Donovan and kick him out of the room. Donovan won’t believe that and The Countess says that turning him was one of the best moments of her life, but now all she can see is Tristan.
Back at Hotel Cortez, John jumps over the front desk and handcuffs Iris to the desk, wanting to know why she let a child wander around the hotel. Iris, to be a which, divulges that she knows about Holden’s kidnapping. John wants to know EVERYTHING that’s going on in the hotel before uncuffing her and buying her a drink so they can talk. Iris tells him the story of James March, who built the hotel in 1925 to have sound proof walls, mazes, floors with no exits, and secret passageways – the perfect way to trap and dispose of the people he would kill. He killed about three people a week. The Maid witnessed it all and was his trusted ally, even more-so than his own wife. He got sloppy towards the end of his reign of terror and the police came knocking, his wife reportedly having been the one to turn him in. James March and The Maid know the jig is up and the duo decide to commit murder-suicide as to not weather away in jail. The Maid wanted to have the honor of being his last murder victim, so he shoots her in the face before slitting his throat. John thinks the story is a lie and doesn’t believe in curses or the supernatural, but Iris says that he should… since he’s currently staying in James March’s room, #64. Back at the police station, they discover that the blood on the award is that of the killer’s first murder victim and John realizes that, by killing people in hotels, the attacker is trying to mirror James March while picking his victims based on The Ten Commandments.
Back at Hotel Cortez, Tristan uses a gay hook-up app to find a lumberjack that he wants to feed on. The two men make out in the elevator and Tristan is about to be “the catcher” when The Countess saunters in. The lumberjack is over the sexual encounter because he’s strictly dickly, however, Tristan slits the man’s throat before he can leave. Tristan feeds off him and offers The Countess a piece of the action, but she says she’d rather sit back and watch his first feeding.
