Jean could not stop shaking. Only this time it was not due to lack of blood. She'd had plenty now. Almost too much. The little vial she'd thrown back after crawling into Lucien's office had not come soon enough. She'd broken everything and passed out. How long she'd been out, she did not know. But the thrum of blood through veins and the utterly intoxicating smell of it had rousted her. She'd acted on instinct, desperate for sustenance for her own survival. Her fangs had come out and she'd bitten straight into a delicious muscle throbbing full of blood.
It had taken her a moment to realize that the smell was so good because it was a smell she knew. Once she had sucked down all she needed, taking more than she usually would from someone, she'd recognized that it was Lucien she'd bitten. Lucien who had found her and was holding her and whose blood was pouring down her throat like holy water. She'd released him immediately, horrified at what she'd done.
And now he wanted to talk. He'd reacted calmly. He'd looked at her with shock and confusion, but he had spoken softly—if a little strained and shaky, though that was certainly understandable—and had told her to get cleaned up in case Mattie came home. He was bandaging his own arm, marred by her bite. And she was up in her room, changing her blouse and having trouble doing up the buttons thanks to her shaking hands.
This was all her fault, of course. She'd never gone so long without feeding. She'd never needed to. And if she'd been better about fully using her powers, she might have been able to go on as before. She never would have been discovered by the one person whose memory she could not wipe and mind she could not control. She never would have been discovered at all.
A flash of rage filled her chest but quickly dissipated. She had spent a hundred years angry at Christopher, at the cruel twist of fate that put her in this position. But it wasn't Christopher's fault or anyone else's. He was just the only one she could blame when, like now, things were just a bit too hard to bear.
What was she going to say to Lucien? How was she going to explain this to him? Would he think her crazy and not believe her? Would he think her a monster and try to rid the earth of her evil? No, Lucien would not hurt her. How she knew that, she wasn't sure. But she knew it all the same.
Eventually, she managed to make herself look presentable and normal. And despite the anxious churning of her stomach, she felt better now than she had in days. Days without blood had made her weak and ill, and she was finally not starving for the first time in far too long. She could take some solace in the strength that her body had regained despite the disastrous way she'd attained such strength.
Jean looked at herself in the mirror of her vanity. She looked alright. That was find. She would be fine. Somehow. She'd get through this somehow. She had to go downstairs and speak to Lucien.
She found him pouring the tea. He wasn't shaking as she was. Though he did seem pale. Jean did not know if that was due to his shock at discovering the truth of her or if it was because she'd taken just a little too much of his blood. Perhaps a bit of both.
He looked up and nodded to her, gesturing to the kitchen table. She took her usual place and waited for him to come and bring the tea. She murmured her thanks when he put the mug in front of her. He sat down and they both took sips, each trying to figure out what to do and say.
Lucien spoke first. "I have a lot of questions but perhaps it makes more sense for you to just tell me from the beginning."
Jean's brow shot up her forehead. She'd not expected that. She thought he'd launch into to his questions, talk through his theories and ask her to confirm or deny every thought he had about the situation. That's what he'd usually do. But this was not a usual situation. And Jean somehow found herself amazed by the very idea of telling her story from the beginning. She hardly knew where that actually was.
The strangest part of trying to tell her story, Jean immediately realized, was that she'd never told it before. Not once in her whole long life had she told anyone about all that had happened to her, who she was and what she was and how it all came to be. But Lucien wanted her to now. From the beginning. And so with a deep breath, she began.
"I think it starts with Victoria. Sullivan Bay was first settled by the English in 1803, but the land wasn't good by the coast and the settlers couldn't fight off the enemy from their positions."
"The enemy?" Lucien interrupted.
"Aborigines. That's what we called them back then," she explained. She saw Lucien's eyes grow wide, but he did not ask anything else on that front. She continued, "The settlers from Sullivan Bay abandoned it and went instead down to Tasmania, though it was called Van Dieman's Land at the time. There was a man named John and a woman named Mary who were married and attempted to settle Sullivan Bay and then made their farmstead in Van Dieman's Land. They conceived a child at Sullivan Bay, and the trip to Van Dieman's Land was very dangerous for Mary, but she was able to keep herself well enough to have a successful birth in 1804. John and Mary had six more children, four who lived past two years old, but Mary's first daughter was always a little different. Mary told her it was because she was conceived in a time of adventure. And the little girl grew up wanting adventure. The island wasn't enough for her. She resisted farm life. She was always running away and going to the beach and looking out to the horizon, wanting to see what was beyond. She loved reading books and magazines they received from England, and she was always making up stories to her little brothers and sisters. She was never very popular with the boys on neighboring farms because her head was in the clouds, and she wasn't interested in getting married anyway. She wanted to see the world, just as her mother had. Mary claimed she'd had her adventure, coming from England to Sydney and then to Sullivan Bay and finally Van Dieman's Land. But those dreams of more had ended when she'd married and had her children. They couldn't explore anymore. So when there was a call for settlers to go back to Sullivan Bay in 1834, John and Mary's eldest girl knew she had to find a way to go."
"And did she?" Lucien asked. He was listening to Jean with rapt attention, though the story did not make much sense yet, she knew.
Jean nodded. "She did. She could not afford passage herself, particularly as an unmarried woman. And at thirty years old, she was considered the spinster of the community, not that she much minded. But she found a family who was going to go, and she offered herself as a servant for them, to clean and cook for them and to mind their children. And with that family, she made the passage. The settlement was a success, and the farms and towns that were established are what is Melbourne today."
Lucien interrupted yet again. "I do like a history lesson, Jean, but I'm not quite sure if starting from the beginning meant going back to your first ancestors in Victoria, though it is an interesting story."
She shook her head. She'd not wanted to drop it this way, but she had no real choice. "That wasn't my ancestors, Lucien. John and Mary were my parents. I was the baby conceived in Sullivan Bay in 1803 and born in Van Dieman's Land. I was thirty years old when I came to Melbourne."
His eyes went wide in disbelief. "How is that possible? You can't be much over forty-five."
"I turned one hundred fifty-six at my last birthday. When you gave me that beautiful brooch," she said. "I wasn't born like I am now. But I think my choices only make sense when I explain how I grew up. Who I was before all of…this."
He was silent, waiting for her to go on. It was strange, Lucien Blake being silent.
And so Jean went on. "I was happy on the farm with the Beckett family. It felt like the adventure I'd always wanted, starting fresh somewhere new and meeting new people and exploring a new place. I worked hard, but I had a lot of time to myself. I made friends. There was a man who worked on the neighboring farm." She swallowed hard, not liking having to talk about these things out loud. Not this part, at least. "His name was Christopher Beazley."
"Your husband," Lucien said knowingly.
"Not exactly. We courted and we did fall in love. And Christopher asked me to marry him. I never thought I'd get married, not at thirty-two, not in those days. But Christopher seemed about my age, and he made a good living on the Farrady farm and had a cottage of his own on some of their back acreage. We could have made a good life together. I said yes when he asked me. And he kissed me and took me to his bed. I had an engagement ring on my finger, so I didn't think it could be too wrong, even though I was always a good Catholic, always going to church as soon as there was one for me to go to. Being Catholic was what made my parents leave England to begin with, so it was always very important to me."
"Jean, why didn't you marry Christopher?" Lucien asked softly.
She was strangely glad for his interruption. She was rambling, losing her way in the vast details of the life she'd never shared with anyone. Not anyone living, that is. "That night, after I said yes and Christopher made love to me in his bed, he told me the truth. He said it wasn't right for us to marry if I didn't know going in. He took my hands and told me he loved me and then said he was a vampire."
Her mind swam as she was transported back to that night. They were still naked in Christopher's single bed in that little cottage of his. He sat up, revealing the chiseled muscles on his lean torso. He wasn't a tall man or particularly large, but he was strong. He was strong and beautiful with pale blue eyes and thick, wavy black hair. Jean was constantly pushing his hair back out of his eyes. His hair could never quite be tamed, and neither could he. Christopher was exciting and brought out that part of Jean that still longed for adventure after she'd settled in this new place far from everyone and everything she knew. He reminded her what it was to yearn for more, to live with a carefree smile and a head full of daydreams.
But when Christopher had told her that he was a vampire, she had thought he was joking at first. She had read The Vampyre by John William Polidori when she was a teenager, when the literary magazines arrived in the colonies from England. The image Jean had in her mind of the vampire Lord Ruthven was a seductive, horrific, violent beast. It was preposterous that Christopher was like that at all. He was wild and seductive, but he was full of good humor and always laughing and smiling, and Jean never would have imagined him as harming anyone or anything.
"Jean? Did you…did you say vampire?" Lucien asked. The look on his face was one of horror. It was quite similar to the one Jean had on her face when Christopher had told her. He seemed to be taking it very well so far. But perhaps he was just in shock.
She nodded. "He explained to me that he had been turned in England. He was hundreds of years old and had traveled all the world, moving every decade or so to somewhere new. But he told me that in all that time, he had never met anyone like me. He told me again that he loved me, that he wanted to be with me for eternity, and if I would agree to be with him forever, he would turn me as well and we would marry and he would teach me everything."
"So he turned you?"
Jean nodded again. "That very night. It wasn't a pleasant experience, but when it was all over, I was no longer human. I've been this way ever since."
"And what happened to Christopher?"
So much for Lucien not asking questions. Jean no longer bothered with the full story; he was obviously too curious to be patient any longer, and she could not really blame him for that. Lucien had that way about him, that rabid desire to find the truth and solve the puzzle at all costs. It was surely why he enjoyed working with the police.
But the problem with Lucien's questions about Jean and her history and her Christopher was that she had never needed to answer questions like this before. She was not entirely sure how to explain everything. And, if she was honest, it still hurt to talk about such things, even a century later.
"He was killed," she said simply.
"How? You say he was hundreds of years old, surely that means he couldn't die?"
"He couldn't age," Jean corrected. There was a difference, after all. "Many of the legends and stories about vampires are false, but there is one that is quite true. A vampire can be killed by a wooden stake through the heart. And the farms were attacked by the enemy about a month after Christopher turned me. He went with the other men to fight the enemy back. He told me to stay in his cottage and hide under the bed. I was so newly turned that being anywhere near a battle would be too difficult for me with the smell of blood everywhere. He left and I hid, and there were shouts and screams and awful things that I heard. But eventually, it was silent. And I came out of hiding. The smell of blood was overwhelming and I had trouble controlling myself, but my curiosity won out. I went through the fields and the farms. And…" Her voice hitched.
"What happened, Jean?" Lucien asked softly. He wanted her to explain, but his tone was gentle and kind, for which she was grateful.
"They were dead. All of them. Everyone I knew. All the farmhands, all the farmers, the families, the Beckett children I'd looked after the last two years. They were all dead. Christopher had been killed, too. A wooden spear through his chest. The one way to kill a vampire had come to him, and he was gone."
Something passed through Lucien's face, a flicker of recognition and understanding. That was stranger than anything. Jean thought, for a moment, that he understood.
How could that be, though? How could he possibly understand? He had been in war, had been captured and imprisoned. But he'd been alongside his brothers in arms. That was not the same as what had happened to Christopher and all of their slaughtered friends.
But when Lucien spoke, Jean realized that he did indeed understand. "You were all alone," he breathed.
Jean's eyes filled with tears that she blinked back. "Yes," she said, her voice cracking again. "I've been alone for the last hundred twenty-three years."