It was widely known that most doctors do not make good patients themselves. Healing others gives doctors an inflated sense of invincibility that they all hate to have proven wrong. That, and they don't like ceding control to another doctor.
Lucien Blake was no different in that regard. And, given his penchant for hyperactivity, Lucien was a worse patient than most. He hated sitting still. He hated staying home. He hated not being able to do all he wanted to do when he wanted to do it.
Confinement and physical weakness of any kind also hit Lucien far too close to the memories of the camp and being beaten and isolated and injured and trapped for all that time. He was of course safe and sound in his bed at home in Ballarat, so it was nothing like being in the camp. But the darkness whispered to him when he was left alone for too long. The doubt of his recovery. The question of if he would be better off dead if only to be free of the physical limitations that impeded his very dignity.
Thankfully, he was not left alone for too long. He had Jean, of course, who slept beside him as soon as he was discharged from the hospital. And Mattie would come sit with him and tell him about her day as a nice diversion. And both Alice and Matthew would come visit rather often.
After about four days since his stabbing, Alice came by to go over everything with him again. They—he, Alice, and Jean—were all in agreement that the attack likely had something to do with Sara McKenna's death and therefore their killer vampire. And now they had the benefit of the police to assist as well, given that the attack on Lucien was a crime to be investigated, even if that crime was not related to Sara McKenna, as far as the police were concerned.
"It would be a lot easier if you had gotten a look at your attacker," Alice lamented.
"I agree," Lucien said. "But I didn't see anything. It was…well, I blacked out pretty quickly."
Alice frowned. "If you blacked out, how did you manage the pneumothorax with Lawson's pen?"
It was fuzzy in his memory. He had trouble parsing through exactly what had happened. He went through it all as best he could, speaking slowly as he tried to remember. "I was looking around the barn. It was abandoned. There were tools covered in rust. Piles of musty straw. And I noticed a stain on the ground and went for a closer look. It was blood. I know that much."
"And then you were interrupted?"
"Yes. A voice said 'Hey!' But when I turned around…" Lucien trailed off, trying to remember.
"Oh here, let me," Alice said with slight annoyance.
The next thing Lucien knew, his own memories were playing through his mind as Alice searched through them. He wasn't sure he'd ever get used to the way she did that. It was for a good purpose at present, but it really was annoying. Yet one more reason to be glad that he and Jean were soulmates: she couldn't rifle through his thoughts like this.
Alice gasped in surprise and pulled out of his mind. "Well at least now we know."
"Know what? What did you find?" Lucien asked in confusion.
"You were being controlled," Alice explained. "Your vision went black and you were frozen in place because a vampire was controlling you. He—you said it was a man's voice?"
"Yes, that much I do remember. It wasn't a voice I recognized."
Alice nodded. "That man, whoever he was, is a vampire. He probably was going to feed off you and would have wiped your memory when he was done. But then Lawson came and interrupted him, so he stabbed you instead."
"With a hay hook," Lucien grumbled. Matthew had told him later that the old farm tool was next to him with his blood, but they hadn't been able to get any usable fingerprints off it.
"He must have heard the Chief Superintendent coming and run off before he was seen," Alice surmised.
"That would make sense. A vampire has inhuman speed, so he would have been able to escape before Matthew got to the barn and found me," Lucien agreed.
Alice had a small look of triumph in her hint of a smile. "So. Whoever stabbed you is also our killer vampire."
Lucien threw off the covers of the bed and swung his legs over the side. He hissed in pain at the movement.
"Stop that, what are you doing?" Alice asked in slight alarm.
"I've got to call Lawson and check on the—"
But before Lucien could finish that sentence, the bedroom door opened and Jean appeared with a tray of tea, and she shouted, "Back into bed!"
Lucien should have known. He scowled and did as he was told, gingerly returning to his former position in bed.
Jean put the tray down on the bedside table that she used at night—though of course no one else knew that—and came over to tuck him back in and fluff up his pillows. "You know you can't be up and about," she chided gently. "I won't have you tearing about and disrupting your healing. You've got a dozen stitches in your body, and you need to be careful!"
"I know," he grumbled.
"You should know better than anyone, being a doctor. Honestly, Lucien, what would you say if you had a patient acting this way?" she scolded.
He sighed. "I'd probably talk to his friends and family to keep an eye on him."
"And that's exactly what we're doing," Alice added.
Lucien knew they were right, but it certainly didn't make him happy. "Yes, I know. And the sooner I heal, the sooner you can turn me, and the better we'll all be for it."
"Jean, you're going to turn him?" Alice asked sharply.
"Yes, I don't want something like this to happen again, and it'll be safer once he's a vampire," Jean said.
"Well, I don't know that it would have really helped in this exact instance, seeing as it was a vampire who attacked him by controlling his mind," she pointed out.
Jean's eyes went wide. "What!?"
Alice and Lucien together explained what they had just figured out based on Lucien's memories of the event.
"Then that means that the police are searching for a vampire as your attacker," Jean realized. "Oh Lucien, they won't be able to do much, will they?"
He had to concede that she was right. "Their investigation will help us, though. Before you and Alice forced me back to bed I was going to call Lawson and ask if they've found out who owns that barn. If we know that, you two can at least talk to the owners and search through their heads and see if they know anything about who might have been using it. It's like I always do, Jean, working in parallel to the police. We can use the information they get and do some investigating of our own."
"Yes, but there will be no more investigating for you. Not this time. Alice and I will handle all this, and you stay safe right here so you can recover," Jean instructed.
Alice turned to Jean. "Do we really have to do it ourselves? I mean, now that we know what we're dealing with, shouldn't we inform the council?"
Jean frowned and glared at Alice.
"Oh, I'm sorry," she said quickly. Lucien rather thought that Jean had communicated something directly to Alice's mind using their vampire way of doing things.
"Hang on, what council? What do you mean, Alice?"
Alice hesitated, deferring to Jean. Jean, in turn, sighed and sat down on the edge of Lucien's bed. "Alice has informed me that there is a vampire council that oversees all the vampires of the world. There's a group of them in Melbourne, and Alice has wanted me to talk to them to ask about the powers that I have that she doesn't as well as to get help with this vampire we have running about."
"But you don't want to?" Upon first hearing of such a thing, Lucien was apt to agree with Jean, if she was reticent to go to some unknown body of authority with their problems. Who could know what they would do with Jean and her unique powers. And Lucien knowing so much about them as a human likely seemed a bad idea. But then again, he could understand what Alice might be coming from, if there were others who might be better equipped to assist in the situation. Still, Lucien was never one to step aside and let others handle things if there was something he could do.
Jean put her hand on top of his and said gently, "I don't know what they will do with me or you or in Ballarat, and I don't want anything to happen to either of us. Not now that we've found each other."
Lucien had no argument with that. But Alice did. "You'll be smart to go to them before you turn him," she warned Jean.
"Why should that matter?" Lucien asked.
"Because Jean has special powers and if she's going to turn you, then you might end up with the same ones. And if the council finds out about it some other way, I rather think you'll be sorry," Alice explained.
"What would they do?" Jean's eyes were wide and nervous, and Lucien felt her squeeze his hand in apprehension. He tried to rub her soothingly with his thumb. Though he felt the same unease she did.
"They'll pay attention to you," Alice said. "You'll be watched and followed. I certainly don't want the council involved in Ballarat, and if you do give them reason to stay here, I shall probably have to leave and start over again somewhere else. I've never had any dealings with the council myself, not since they rescued me and set me free from the men who turned me, but I'd like to keep it that way. And I can't imagine that you'd want to have them looing over your shoulder all the time either. If you go to them on your own, they'll be informed and they'll leave you be. If they think you're trying to hide things, they might want to look closer and keep tabs on you. Which is why I've said from the beginning that they should be involved."
Well, Alice certainly had a point there. Lucien could see that Jean didn't like it any better than he did, but they had to admit that Alice was right.
After a small pause, Jean let out a small huff of frustration. "Fine. Lucien and I will go to the vampire council in Melbourne. But not until he's healed and we have fixed the problem of this killer vampire. Ballarat is my town, and I'll not have it threatened this way. Besides, after what that man did to Lucien, I rather think I should be the one to find him."
Lucien did not, before this moment, imagine Jean to be one who might feel compelled to exact revenge. And maybe she wasn't, exactly, but this put her in something of a new light. She wanted to be the one to save Ballarat and to avenge Lucien's suffering. She felt the responsibility for it, to do it herself. If their positions were reversed, Lucien would have felt the exact same way. And that realization comforted him. For all that he and Jean were so vastly different as people in their sensibilities and skills and manners, they were the same in this.