So Much Better
By Becky Durden

So I’m trying to get on with my other story, really I am, but I keep getting stupid little ideas that won’t leave me alone until they’re written down and posted, damn it! Anyway, this is like one of those fables about how someone is *always* worse off than you. I was going to do it with Louis, but he’d see it as tragic, and anyway, I like Jesse. I don’t want to bitch-slap her, unlike Merde-eek.

*Most* history in this BS is true. Most. Not all, so don’t come whining to me about inaccuracies. And don’t even think about lecturing me on Middle English. If I tried to write like that, then nobody would be able to read it.

Spoilers: To QotD.

Disclaimer: What is Mater going to do? Hop on a plane across the Atlantic and get me? She will? Uh-oh. She owns them, not me.

_________

In restless dreams I walked alone
Narrow streets of cobbled stone
-- “Sound of Silence,” Paul Simon

____________

It was good to be back in England for a while. It was good to be walking down a country lane, following the lights of a village gleaming ahead, a beacon in the darkness, and not to feel afraid. When Jesse had first come to this country, years ago, an eager and young student happy to be away from home, she had not dared walk these places at night. Perhaps it wasn’t loud and busy like New York or Chicago, but she felt safer in cosmopolitan places than little dark back-roads.

Of course, as a vampire, Jesse could do what she pleased. And right now, she was pleased to be in the place that she considered home above all others, even her native America. It was the place where she had been inducted into the Talamasca, and if she couldn’t exactly enter the motherhouse now, she could visit David whenever he was in the Cotswolds.

He had called her to England over some artifact or another he had managed to get hold of. An unscrupulous archaeologist had found some parchments dating back to the Roman era in the old Roman stronghold of Chester. They seemed rather mundane, apart from the alarming number of references to a couple of red-haired twins depicted on them. David had been uncommonly excited about the find, and Jesse, always interested in the macabre history of her lineage, had agreed to come to Chester to see these things.

She was scheduled to meet up with him at Brocksden Hotel the next night, and for now, set up in a comfortable little inn on the outskirts of the town, she was reacquainting herself with the place. She had not returned to England in a few years, and she found herself appreciating more than ever the green pastures around her, the sounds of native birds and people who drove on the wrong side of the road.

Perhaps to get herself into the feel of the artifacts she would be examining the following night, she wandered towards a rather sad and neglected churchyard that was overshadowed by an ugly, modern factory right towering right behind it. The church, she knew from a local guidebook picked up in a WHSmith store at the railway station, pre-dated the Roman era. It was built on an ancient plot of land that Jesse suspected contained a lot of secrets.

Of course, the church itself was locked for the night, and though she had wanted to inspect the architecture inside the church, she was horrified at the thought of breaking and entering. Whether she believed in God anymore was irrelevant; she did believe in the peace of churches and conserving the final resting place of the locals, even if they were buried in—she wiped at the moss on one of the headstones—1032!

Spurred on by her little find, she participated in a rather morbid tour of the graveyard, leaving behind the modern graves in favour of the older ones which bore inscriptions that told of death by plague, consumption… morbid, but interesting. One even listed death as being “Fright by Spirit.” Whatever that meant.

It was as she wandered the churchyard that she became aware of the growing pain deep within her stomach. There it was, warning her, it had to be fed. She had gone without blood for nearly three days, now, and it was beginning to hurt her. A sick, nauseous feeling was beginning to affect her, to let itself be known. And then there would be the thirst, and the death, and the same self-loathing, the same moral mess. Louis was right; sometimes it was almost too much to bear.

And yet even as she wrestled with her conscience, loathe to kill yet another person, she saw a figure hunched up against the church, sitting right near the gutter. Wrapped in rags, it appeared, probably an old tramp trying to find sleep for the night.

Well, he could sleep all he wanted now. Jesse was no longer the pretty young woman in search of history, as she stole up towards him, her eyes glittering in the dark. She was the undiscerning, hungry predator, and she had found her prey. She began to pull back her lips, revealing two gleaming white fangs…

The tramp turned a disinterested gaze upon her. “Piss off, missy, I’m not dinner.”

“Wha… what?” To say that Jesse was taken aback was an understatement. She stood there, staring stupidly at him, imagining that she had misunderstood what he had said.

“You heard me- piss off. “

Well, she couldn’t just leave the strange man at that. She walked closer, her heels crunching against the gravel, the sound echoing eerily about the graveyard. She bent closer to take a closer look at the man.
He stood up quickly, defensively, far too fast for a human, grabbing her wrist and she couldn’t help it—she shrieked in horror. She pulled back from him quickly, as they stared at each other.

The man was wearing what appeared to be a monk’s cassock. No, tell a lie, it was more like a robe—a sacrificial robe as she had seen in countless history books. He was most definitely not human, but not like anything she had encountered before, either. He wasn’t pale and ethereal, like a vampire, but he didn’t glow with ectoplasm, either, so he was no ghost. “I thought I tol’ you to piss off!” he snarled angrily, in a harsh, sharp accent.

He pulled down his hood, and Jesse repressed a gasp. He was, or had been, an old man. His grey beard was singed, his face covered in painful-looking heat blisters and raw, peeled flesh. His blue eyes seemed the only thing alive on him, but his face was that dirt-covered, that wrinkled from heat damage that one could barely keep his gaze. Jesse certainly couldn’t. She felt sick to her stomach, and glanced away from him in horror.

“I—I’m sorry.”

“Friggin’ bloodsuckin’ thing wanderin’ round, frightenin’ people—“

That did make Jesse look at him. “What are you?” she asked, moving forward. To Jesse’s mind, being undead did not mean that her Talamascan-trained curiosity could just simply be turned off.

“I’m bleedin’ Samuel effin’ Pepys, aren’t I?”

Jesse’s eyes lit up. “Really?”

“No, you daft mare! “

“Excuse me?” she asked, taken aback. Nobody had ever talked to her like that—not in mortal life, and certainly not as a vampire. Nobody would dare!

“An’ you should start puttin’ mud on yer face or something—it looks like friggin’ putty.”

“What? Shut up!”

He ignored that comment. He bowed, low, “An’ as for yer question—I’m a Guardian—what’s it friggin’ look like?”

“A Guardian,” she repeated. Of course, she had learned of this in her junior years at the Talamasca; in the pagan times of England, long before the times of Shakespeare and Elizabeth I, there had existed strange and downright savage rituals in the isles. One of the more gruesome rituals had been the (unwilling) sacrifice of a person from a given hamlet or town to the gods whenever a graveyard or barrow was established. The hapless person was then doomed to watch over the other souls of the place for all time.

It had been a suitably gruesome story in a compelling book on the occult history of England that she had read. She had thought it savage and cruel, but, even as a Talamascan, had scoffed at the petty ritual. An earthbound soul destined to look over the others forever! And yet here she was, conversing of all things, as if they were kindred creatures of the night, with one of them right now. But that was the thing; if she was a vampire, and he was a---

“Before yer go an’ ask, I’m no ghost. I’m a Guardian, see.”

Jesse frowned at this ambiguous statement. It was like saying she wasn’t human, but she was a journalist. It didn’t make sense. “Erm…”

He sensed her confusion. And, apparently enraged that she thought him some lowly ghost, he reached out a stinking hand to her. “’Ere, I’m bleedin’ flesh and blood! Touch me skin, go on!”

Staring at the peels of blistered flesh and wrinkling her nose at the foul smell emanating from him, Jesse declined politely. How on earth had she ever mistaken him for a human, anyway? The smell was disgusting. She had to shove her hands into her pockets, in a most unladylike way, to stop herself from covering her face in disgust.

“’An where you from, anyway? Bath? Londinium? You’ve got a right weird accent.”

“I’m American.”

“Don’t sound like no friggin’ accent to me. American, eh? ‘Sides, weren’t you all fightin’ Mad King George or summat?”

“A few hundred years ago, yeah.” She replied, trying hard, and failing, to keep the sarcasm from her voice.

“Crivvens—‘as it bin that long already?”

“Yes—can’t you read the headstones? What’s that say there? ‘1992’.”

“Stupid wench. I can’t read, can I?”

Jesse frowned. “Oh, sorry. Of course.” She was about to ask him a further question about the rituals surrounding his death, but he was already off again:

“Mind, can’t blame yers. Yer may be traitors to the Empire an’ all that, but he was as mad as friggin’ badger. I mean—an ‘at tax?”

Jesse gazed at him curiously. “How do you know all this? I mean, I take it you died long before that.”

“Too right I did. I hear people talkin’, like. Used ter be quakers in that field, always talkin’ about this an’ that, an then the Kirkby bastards killed ‘em an’ then they built a big fuckin’ barn there.”

“You mean the factory?”

“No, a barn. That’s wharrit is.”

”No, it’s a factory. See, “Colmans’ mustard. It’s a factory.”

“You’re a bit touched in auld head, aren’t you?”

Jesse could see this crazed argument going on until dawn at this rate. “So,” she said, bringing the conversation smoothly back on track, “you say you were sacrificed just for a graveyard?”

He nodded grimly. “An’ now I have to stay here an’ guard this freezing fuckin’ place forever. So don’t be tellin’ me you got it bad. And what can I do, anyway? When the little bleeders come in an’ scrawl all over me headstones—wharram I gonna do? They’d all laugh at me if they saw me.”

“Ghosts do tend to frighten people—“

“I told yer, you daft cow! I’m *not* a ghost!”

“All right—“

“… I appeared to some little scrote who was lettin’ his flea-ridden mongrel do a gurt big shite over there-“ he gestured to a part of the cemetery that languished in darkness, “an’ I put on the spooky voice and I even had glowin’ eyes, an’ I said, ‘get oot o’ here! Now!’ And, then, this is true, this, the little bastard turns aroun’ and goes, “are you a ghost? ‘Cos I’ve read about you in Harry Potter.” An’ I said, “What the bleedin’ ‘ell is Harry Potter!”

Jesse’s eyebrows furrowed. She felt she should be offended at the vulgar speech this man gave, throwing out obscenities like they were verbs, but, truth be told, she could barely understand what he was saying. His dialect was a cross between Newcastle and Yorkshire accents, both of which she had trouble understanding at the best of times. And then there was the strange, Germanic hardness of his accent—Jesse knew enough about British history to know of Middle English, with its Germanic and Nordic influences, but it was little consolation when trying to understand this man.

“It’s a book.” She said finally.

“What?”

“Harry Potter. It’s a book.”

“Wha’ do I care about bleedin’ books? I can’t read! Honestly, woman, are you simple or somethin’?”

Jesse scowled. “There was no need for that. I was simply—“

“Oh shut it, stop whinin’,” he cut in rudely, “Can’t expect me to be friggin’ decent with all yous wreckin’ me burial thingy.”

“I only wanted to help,” she said, forcing herself to reel her temper in. She considered herself a patient woman, but this ghost—sorry, *Guardian* was sorely testing her to her limit. “You looked so lonely,” she said softly.

He did look at her, then, and beneath the ashen face, two soft blue eyes stared out at her, bemused. “I’ve always bin lonely, Missy. Can’t change nowt now. Me family wasn’t ‘xactly helpful, now, was they?”

“I’m sorry.”

“Divven’t be.”

“Like I said, if there’s anything—“

Inexplicably, he turned again, “Wha’ are you gonna do, anyway? I already told you, sod off. Go and frighten someone to death, or something. Matter of fact, find the shower of shite what have been throwin’ rubbish over me hedge, and rip out their throats. Bleedin’ hell, if I had half the powers—“ he fumbled about, fixing his hood back over his face, took one last look at Jesse—“Well, go on, go away”—and then he ambled off, muttering under his breath like the bitter old man that he was.

The vampire breathed a sigh of relief as he walked away. The foul stench of his rotting remains left with him, and the whispering of the oak trees nearby was infinitely more peaceful than his colourful language.

Still, it *had* been an interesting experience. To meet something like that—not vampire, not ghost, but other—to learn something more about this fascinating world. She shivered involuntarily, pulling her coat closer around her lean body, tossing her red hair proudly. All right, perhaps it was vain, but she was glad that Maharet’s legacy had been vampirism and not… that.

She crossed the road from the lonely little graveyard and started her way back down towards the village. She remembered that she needed to eat, and she pushed down the guilt and the horror at the act she would have to commit tonight. She recalled the Guardian’s sad and pitiful plight, a soul destined to wander around in misery for all eternity, guarding his murderers. Such a barbaric history this little island had, such a barbaric world, in fact. Jesse did not carry Lestat’s illusion of holding some Divine Right to dish out judgement upon humans like some dark angel sent by God to do His work. But one thing she was learning, as she travelled more, as she experienced more life as a vampire, was that perhaps her kind were not so morally different from the humans at any rate.

She couldn’t always convince herself of this, but it allowed her to walk through life with her head held high, and for Jesse, that was enough.

Das Ende!