Jean was right behind Edward out the door, but having to tell Alice what to do had been hesitation enough for him to get away from her. He was quick, of course, and so was she. But the problem was that Jean had no idea what direction he went. She couldn't see or hear well enough to track him when he was going that quickly. If he was an ordinary human, it would have been simple. She'd never had to track a vampire before.

After about a moment of consideration, Jean made sure she was safely ensconced in the Tynemans' garden and no one was watching her. And then she closed her eyes and took a deep breath, letting her power flow through her. It had been a while since she'd done this, but it wasn't really something she could forget how to do.

Before she knew it, she was suspended midair. Jean gave two powerful beats of her wings and soared up high into the sky. She usually preferred something smaller, but the sensitive eyes and flying agility of an eagle would serve her best in this circumstance. And as a great wedge-tailed eagle, she could see even the smallest movements far below. Jean caught the updraft and glided gently through the air as she searched the ground for some sense of Edward.

And then she saw him. He ran too fast even for her eagle eyes to fully process, but Jean could see the way the wind he created by his speed moved the trees and grass on the side of the road leading away from the Tyneman mansion and out of town.

Surely he wouldn't be foolish enough to…? Well, it seemed he was. Edward was going back to the barn. Back to where he'd killed Sara. Back to where he'd nearly killed Lucien.

Jean flew fast, though not as fast as Edward could run. He got to the barn before she did. That was perhaps for the best. After running like that, he was surely exhausted. Even for a vampire, the energy reserves were not unlimited. Jean knew she couldn't run like that for very long. Though Edward had just fed. That would make him more powerful. Not something Jean wanted to think about just now.

She landed in a tree nearby the barn. She waited for a moment to see if Edward was going to leave again or do something that she needed to prepare for. When nothing happened, she hopped off the branch and transformed back into her usual self before she reached the ground. And then she walked the thirty feet to the open door of the barn.

In those thirty feet, Jean realized how incredibly foolish she was being. Edward had killed people! He was a vampire! This wasn't like when she had rescued Lucien from Sergeant Hannam. This wasn't a situation she could solve by just controlling the villain and sending him on his way. She did not have Lucien here with her. Or Alice. Or the police. No one to call the police and no way to find help anywhere.

All her life, Jean had been two different people locked away in her heart. She was born to adventurers and sought adventure herself, and obviously she was still very much that same woman who had left her family far behind to help begin a new settlement. John and Mary's eldest girl fell madly in love with the handsome, mysterious farmhand who shared his secret and had turned her into a vampire like him when she eagerly agreed to spend eternity with him. And that was the part of her that had leapt into Lucien's arms up on learning he was her soulmate and thrown all sense of propriety to the wind in order to claim him for herself. That was the part of her that had turned into an eagle and followed a killer vampire to a secluded barn without a second thought.

But Jean was also the woman who her life had forced her to be. She was cautious and aloof. She had to keep everyone at arm's length to ensure that no one ever got too close to know her true nature. She had to be the perfect model of a woman to keep others from getting too interested in her. She went to church and followed the rules and was polite and tidy. She was the perfect housekeeper and receptionist to Dr. Blake, and she could cook and clean and care for Lucien and Mattie as well. She was everything she was supposed to be, all starched and tucked in and never a chip in her nail polish. And the part of Jean that would never walk out of her bedroom with so much as a scuff on her shoes or a run in her stocking was screaming at her to run away and get help. Her prudent and wary nature was begging for her to do the right thing. The widow Jean Beazley knew better.

But it was John and Mary's adventurous daughter that won out instead. Jean's gait never faltered as she strode into that barn.

"Stop right there," she said sharply as she entered to see Edward pacing anxiously.

Whether out of reflex to an order or just pure shock, Edward did as she said. He froze where he was. His great hulking form was red-faced and a bit sweaty and out of sorts. He did have quite the run getting here. "What…?"

Jean could feel him push into her mind, but she luckily was able to notice quick enough to shield against him. "Stop that," she said in that same strict tone. "I am far older than you are, and I know much better than you what I'm doing. If you run again, I'll only find you again. I don't want to hurt you, Edward, I only want to understand what on earth has been going on."

His enormous shoulders slumped. "I am sorry, Mrs. Beazley," he said quietly.

She softened toward him immediately. "How did all of this happen?" Jean knew she could have just searched through his mind and found all of the answers she wanted, but it was important, she felt, to have him explain for himself. She didn't even need to read his thoughts to know that the poor man was terrified. And Jean remembered him as a child. A child who grew up as the son of the wealthiest, most powerful man in town. His life surely had not gone as he expected. Jean knew about that better than anyone.

Edward looked at her with that same fear but something else in his eyes that she could not quite name. But he spoke, and she listened. He told her, "I was living in Melbourne and I was out having fun…"

Jean didn't even need to look into his head; his thoughts were so strong that they were practically broadcast straight to her. Her mind was suddenly filled with visions of bedrooms and film cameras and women and men in multiple states of undress, most of them intoxicated by something or other. "Yes, I understand," she said quickly, banishing those unseemly images.

"There was a bloke I met who offered me a lot of different things. We were…we were just having a laugh. Only then I started getting dizzy and tried to call it a night but he wouldn't let me go. I thought I was seeing things when his fangs came out and he bit my neck. And then I…well, I woke up like this."

Edward was the third vampire Jean had ever met in her life. She did not know how Christopher had been turned. Alice had been kidnapped and nearly killed and turned to save her life. And now it seemed Edward, too, had been turned against his will. Jean knew what was happening and chose it for herself. She could not imagine what it would be like to be forced into it, confused and afraid and not being able to trust the one who turned you. It must have been awful.

He went on to tell her just how awful it was. "I thought I'd gone mad. I thought I had died. I…I had no idea what was going on. But the instincts kick in. The hunger for blood and all. The fangs know what to do. I stayed in that hotel and fed when I needed to, and I could hear everyone's thoughts and I figured out how to control them. And then it got easier."

Once more, Jean was bombarded by Edward's memories of his time in Melbourne as a newly turned vampire. It might have been instinct for him, and it might well have been easy. But it seemed to Jean that Edward had gone on a rampage. A gluttonous, violent rampage. He used his powers cruelly, making people do his bidding and feeding on them and bedding the women and doing whatever he wanted. She was absolutely horrified. "How long ago were you turned?" she asked, trying to steer his thoughts in another direction.

"Seven months," he answered.

He had done a lot of damage in seven months. "Why did you come back to Ballarat?" she asked.

Edward shrugged. "I needed money. And people were starting to ask questions in Melbourne. Thought it was better if I left for a little while." The fear was starting to wear off, it seemed. He was growing more comfortable as they continued to talk calmly like this. It was probably the first time he'd been able to talk about these things, actually.

"One man you fed off, Andrew Jenkins, was left confused and dazed after you left, and he was confronted by a man with a gun and was shot because he couldn't properly understand what was going on," Jean told him.

"Well that's not my fault," Edward defended, a note of disgust in his voice at the very insinuation that he might be culpable for Andrew's death.

"Roger Miggs, the projectionist at the Rex? He passed out after you fed from him and hit his head on the table and died."

"So?"

His completely lack of remorse was positively disgusting. Jean felt a righteous anger bubble up inside her, but she tried to keep calm. "What about Sara McKenna?" she asked. Her voice had gone shaky.

At last, Edward had a reaction. "I…I didn't mean to hurt Sara. She was a nice girl. I liked her."

"Did she come with you from Melbourne?"

He nodded. "I met her in a shop, and I liked her. I couldn't read her mind or control her, which was sort of nice. So I never fed off her. I couldn't bring her home, though, without telling my parents. She stayed here for about a week."

"In the barn?" Jean asked in surprise.

"Cleaned up the hayloft, I brought her everything she needed."

Jean could not fathom a nice young girl falling for someone like Edward Tyneman and agreeing to be hidden away in the hayloft of an abandoned barn for a whole week. But then again, Edward said he'd not been able to read Sara. And as Jean had learned, when a vampire could not read someone, it meant that they were soulmates. Jean's heart sank in her chest at the realization. Because she knew what happened to Sara.

"We were here together when I realized I needed to feed. I started kissing her to distract her and I bit her neck and…"

"You couldn't stop," Jean supplied. A soulmate's blood was irresistible. Jean knew that for herself. If she could have consumed Lucien's blood forever, she would. It was only her love and care for him that was more powerful than the taste of his blood, the love and care that kept her in control and prevented her taking too much.

"I've never tasted anything so good in all my life! I didn't want to stop."

Jean felt sick. "Edward, you completely drained her body of blood. You must have realized she was dead long before the blood ran out."

Edward's expression flickered. He was no longer afraid. He was no longer hiding what was lurking beneath the fear. And Jean suddenly understood. He had realized that Sara had died. He didn't stop when she grew weak. It wasn't that he couldn't stop. He didn't want to stop.

All of a sudden, Edward lunged and grabbed the pitchfork out of an old bale of hay and rushed at Jean. His thoughts screamed in her head, his psychotic need to conquer, to get what he wanted, to be left to do whatever he wanted. He'd fed on his own parents and the woman he could have loved if he even had the capacity to love. He had no remorse for the lives he had taken. He wanted Jean to leave him alone, and he intended to make sure she did.

Edward was quick and Jean wasn't ready to shapeshift or dodge the attack. But Jean reacted on instinct. "NO!" she bellowed, pushing all her power out of her at once to keep him away from her.

The force of it knocked Jean back to fall hard backwards, but Edward bore the brunt of it. It was just like that day in the kitchen when Jean forced Alice out of her mind and pushed her chair backwards. Only this time, Jean's power was backed by her own fear and surprise and the anger that was simmering inside her as she learned what a monster Edward truly was. Jean hadn't just pushed him back and away from her. She had pushed him into the back wall of the barn. Through the wall, actually. The wood was old and brittle, and it could not withstand the impact.

Everything was quiet. The wind was still. No birds sang. Not a sound dared make itself known.

Jean was not sure if she had blacked out or not. She was shaking all over and gasping for air. She'd never experienced anything like that before. She managed to stand up, though her knees threatened to buckle. And when she looked to the hole in the barn wall, she realized why everything was so deathly quiet.

The wood of the wall had splintered when Edward was slammed into it. One of the boards broke into a sharp point. Jean only knew that because the end of it was protruding through Edward's chest, glistening with his blood. A stake through the heart.