Liar
Becky Durden

Disclaimer: Yeah, SHE owns them. She can sue me because I haven’t got any money, anyway.
Spoilers: To ToTBT (Disregards later books)
Dedicated to: Rachael. Leeds is the best choice, honest!

Someone said they would like a BS dealing with Jesse’s notions of life and about her engagement. Hmm… I didn’t really tackle that, but a (short) BS grew out of it all the same.

Also, this pertains to some aspects of Cesare’s “Historical Implications”, in that it refers to a small event in that BS. Hope she doesn’t mind! :-)


“It gets dark, it gets lonely on the other side of you.”
-- Kate Bush, “Wuthering Heights”.

“There are always…sadder thoughts that will recur to our minds: thoughts of the past, of changes…therefore, I will not linger on the past.”
-- James Joyce, “The Dead.”

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London, England, January 2001.

The black waters of the Thames reflected a million neon lights of night-time London. Big Ben, tall and impassive, chimed the hour of eight ‘o clock, the sky pitch-black and foreboding around the lit-up tower.

Friday night and all of London seemed to be out on the town. A carnival of life and colour paraded through the streets; club-goers and hedonists mingling amongst MPs leaving parliament and the homeless alike. The land that had once been savaged by raiders of all nations, Romans, Vikings and every other pillager, was now, in the twenty-first century, a chaos of urban life.

And Jesse had never loved it more than at this moment.

After travelling the plains of Africa, the far reaches of the Amazon and the darkest parts of the Southern equator, she had felt a desperate need to be back here. Although in life she had been an American citizen, it was always England that had charmed her, fascinated her.

Walking through the inner city, she fancied she saw spirits haunting every alley and townhouse she passed. In Yorkshire, she had been so consumed by trepidation at those dark and savage moors that she had only stayed one night. The Northern cities of Liverpool and Manchester held so many sad and terrible secrets that they had saddened her.
Here, in London, she had loved it. So modern, and yet so haunted by trappings of the past! How had she stayed away so long? And then, just as strange a thought, why had she felt such a sudden need to be away from Maharet, from Mael, to come back to the place she had known and loved?

Really, she knew why. She played with the ring on her finger that she had kept with her, even after the events that had made it a painful thing to keep. She closed her eyes. *Don’t think on that now.*

As a young woman living and working in Britain, she felt she lived for Friday nights. Consumed by work and the secrets of the past she had to uncover, she would drop these things on this one night to travel from Chelsea to the innermost part of the city, and lose herself in the anonymity of the night.

She had found many friends here; many Brits had been taken with her accent, the glamour of America as she had been enthralled with their lonely Isles. Sarah and Mark, they had been two friends from the museum whom she had loved dearly. And now they were married, probably with children and a nice little semi-detached house, probably thinking little of their American friend who had died tragically at a 1980s concert in California.

With a bitter smile, she glanced down at the ring again, her vampirical sight picking out each and every aspect of the diamond set in the gold band. An engagement ring.

*Don’t think upon it.*

Turning from the waterfront, she began to walk. The hour passed by, and then another, and another, until it was twelve ‘o clock, and she still hadn’t fed. She was starting to feel the ominous pangs of hunger that would have had a weaker vampire like Louis delirious by now.

But she had the ancient blood, didn’t she? And by that, she was less human than someone who had lived centuries before her. She walked on.

She found herself at Piccadilly Circus, watching the traffic and the crowds go by in silent reverence. She hardly ever talked to people any more. She must never allow them to get too close, Maharet had told her. Jesse longed for conversation.
Daniel was her only real coeval; they were both children of the twentieth century, both had revelled in urban life. David belonged to what seemed an altogether different era, and as such it was only to Molloy that she could turn. Yet, where he was now, she didn’t have the slightest idea.

“Jess!” someone shouted along the streets. Her blood froze. A mortal voice, calling her name? And then a young man was embracing a girl, and she sighed with something amounting to disappointed loneliness.

*Matthew, where are you now?*

She forgot her resolve to turn from the past, and allowed a fleeting image of a summer’s day spent at the park with him. He had seemed so loving, cocky but tender, regaling her with tales of his family, a close-knit family who had welcomed her with open arms. When he had announced his proposal to them, they had been ecstatic. Things had been going so well, and then…

She visibly scowled. What was this, this ridiculous mourning for lost mortal life? So foolishly romantic, to imagine her time here as Utopia. Surely she remembered how frightening it had been to walk through inner London at night, always with the threat of violence? What of the extortionate rates charged for her flat in Chelsea, so that for the first few months, she worked virtually all the time at the museum? Hadn’t that mundane mortal task been the reasons for Matthew leaving? Hadn’t it…?

*No, it was more than that.*

Forcing herself to leave these thoughts behind, she let them drift to more relevant matters. She wondered how Lestat was, that leonine seducer who had once held her so enthralled. She laughed a little, he still did, actually, but *he* in turn had given his heart to quiet, gentle Louis.

Love was no easier in vampirical life, she decided. Armand had told Daniel, who had in turn told Jesse on a fleeting visit a small anecdote concerning Louis and Lestat. Armand had paid an impromptu visit to New Orleans, and Lestat, upon hearing this, had glued himself to a seemingly oblivious Louis, who had incidentally moved out of the townhouse. Lestat’s possessiveness was a common source of conversation for the coven, even for those who secretly envied the magnetic pull he and Louis held for each other.

And hadn’t Jesse known a love like that? Not the seductive charms of Mael, more the flightful notions of happiness that she had experienced one summer so many years ago? She sighed. Why keep returning to this? Did she miss it? Wasn’t this life-in-death something that had enthralled her so much more? Wasn’t this miracle more satisfying than the husband’s touch, the baby’s smile?

She felt the tears course down her face, and where she had expected the taste of salt, the tang of blood was all she tasted when she ran her tongue over her lips. Hideous, this spectacle.

“Are you all right, love?” asked a gentle voice at her side.

She turned and hastily wiped the crimson tears from her cheeks. “Yes, I’m all right. I’m fine.”

The speaker was a young man. Mid-twenties, dark and handsome. He was dressed in that scruffy student way; khakis, trainers and a French Connection T-Shirt. She glanced at the “FCUK Fear” label and was compelled to laugh.

He smiled. “What’s so funny?”

“Oh, nothing. I was just…nothing.” She smiled. “Thanks. I’m okay, really.”

The young man laughed and put his hand out. “Well, I think you should be formally introduced to the guy who stopped you crying. Tom.”

She paused, considered. “…Jessica.”

“That’s a nice name.”

Jesse rolled her eyes. “I bet you say that to all the girls.”

“No, it’s true. I wouldn’t say it if your name was Gertrude or anything. It’s a nice name.” He nodded as if to affirm this. “So, what do you do? I’m a student-“

Jesse bit her lip. “Look, Tom, I’m sorry, I’m going to have to go. I-“

He grinned, “Why? Because I’m a student? Look, I do pay my way, you know. I’ll even get you a discount at some of the clubs-“

“No!”

He looked hurt, then. “I was only trying to cheer you up…”

Jesse shook her head. “It’s not a good idea. I have to go!” she cried in anguish, and then she was pushing through the crown, losing Tom, losing herself.

Later, having dried the tears from her eyes and regained her usual cool composure, as well as that nightly kill, she sat watching Trafalgar square from a small café. London had once again opened up a plethora of memories for her, and she closed her eyes, no longer running from their onslaught, more to brace herself against it and be done with this melancholia.

The memories came thick and fast.

Picnics in Hyde Park. Kisses from Matthew. Watching *EastEnders* on her tatty old couch at the flat. Lestat’s image on *Top of the Pops*. Snow falling over Chelsea. The old house down the road where Bram Stoker had lived. Train journeys up to Edinburgh for the summer festival, miles of green countryside hurtling past the window. Glimpse of Mael in Trafalgar Square. British Museum. Tattered old paperback, ugly rendition of Louis framed by gold-plated words, *Interview With the Vampire*. Blood. People screaming for mercy blood heart stilling and body dying blood thrown against wall broken neck blood…

Wandering through the crowds as the dawn began to break, Jesse felt again that sense of superiority. Each weak heart she heard, every sense of frailty that most bodies carried, reminded her of her own indestructibility. She cast one last glance at them, before disappearing into the shadows, into her resting place.

They were warm and happy, but would soon succumb to age. She was immortal. They were young and in the light, and she was in the dark, but she would outlive them and their children’s children. She was a killer, with blood on her hands, but without mortal aspirations of marriage and children and age.

No, she did not miss it at all.

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