Blood Lines

unsure.
    'Vampire?"
    'Yes…"
    Surrey stood and fought to find his tongue. "You gained immortality," he said at last, "and you let me believe you were dead."
    Taken completely by surprise, Henry raised his hands as though the words were blows.
    'The death you allowed me to believe in dealt me a wound that still bleeds," Surrey continued, his voice shredding under the edge of his emotion. "I loved you. How could you betray me so?"
    'Betray you? How could I tell you?"
    'How could you not?" His brows drew down and his tone grew suddenly bitter. "Or did you think you couldn't trust me? That I would betray you?" He read the answer on Henry's face. "You did. I called you the brother of my heart and you thought I would give your secret to the world."
    'I called you the same, and I loved you just as much as you loved me, but I knew you, Surrey; this is a secret you would not have been able to keep."
    'Yet after giving me eleven years of sorrow you trust me with it now?"

    'I've come to get you out. I could not let you die…"
    'Why? Because my death would cause you the same grief that I've carried for so long?" He took a deep breath and closed his eyes, his throat moving in an effort to suppress the tears that trembled on the edge of every word. After a moment he said, so softly that had Henry still been mortal he would not have heard, "I'll keep your secret. I'll carry it to my grave." Then his head came up and he added, a little louder. "Tomorrow."
    'Surrey!" Nothing Henry said would change his mind. He begged; he pleaded; he went down on his knees; he even offered immortality.
    Surrey ignored him.
    'Dying to have revenge on me is foolishness!"
    'The Richmond I knew, the boy who was my brother, died eleven years ago. I mourned him. I mourn him still. You are not here."
    'I could force you," he said at last. "I have powers you can't defend against."
    'If you force me," Surrey said, "I will hate you."
    He had no answer to that.
    He stayed and argued until the coming sun forced him away. The next night, he entered the chapel of the Tower, opened the unsealed coffin that held the severed head and trunk of Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, kissed the pale lips, and cut free a lock of hair. His nature no longer allowed him tears. He wasn't sure he would have shed them if it had.
    '' Sat Superest , it is enough to prevail.' " Henry shook himself free of the memories. "I should have taken Surrey's motto as my own, shoved it down his throat, and carried him out of there flung over my shoulder." Well, he was older now, more sure of himself, more certain that his way was the right way, less likely to be swayed by hysterical reactions. "I should have let him hate me, at least he'd have been alive to do it." Vicki, he knew, would not have been so foolish.
    Had she been in the tower in Surrey's place, first she would have worried about getting free, then she would have hated him.
    And she was unlikely to protest against this rescue tonight.
    If she were in her right mind.
    As Henry tried not to think of what the drugs might have done, the floodlights went out.
    Vicki had spent the afternoon using sound and touch to discover the boundaries of her confinement. Surprisingly enough, with her eyes removed from the general equation and used only to peer at specific close-ups, she seemed to get around better, not worse. She hadn't realized how much she'd come to rely on other senses over the last year until they were all she had to rely on. Without her glasses, her vision-or lack of it-had become more of a distraction than a help.
    After the incident in the showers, Lambert had returned triumphant to the soap operas, but Natalie followed close on Vicki's heels, her adenoidal breathing occasionally drowning out the constant roar of the four televisions and intermittent roar of the women who watched them. Commercials seemed to have the greatest effect-Vicki wondered if maybe it was because the plots of commercials were understood by the greatest number of the inmates.
    Every now and then, Natalie would reach out and viciously pinch a hunk of Vicki's flesh. Her muscle control still affected by the residue of the drug, Vicki hadn't the speed or coordination to avoid the snakelike strikes. The fifth time it happened, she slowly turned and beckoned her tormentor closer.

    'The nect time you do tha'," she said, forming the words as carefully as she could, "I'm gona' grab you' wris', pull you close, and rip you' ear off. Then I'm gona' feed it to you. You