by Tanya Huff
One breath, two, three; Celluci groped blindly for the phone, the darkness no longer a protection but an enemy to be fought. Henry reached out and guided his hands, then moved quickly to the extension in the bedroom as he dialed.
“Dave? Where is she?”
Dave sighed. Henry heard the soft flesh of his lower lip compressed between his teeth. “Metro West Detention Center. At least, I think it’s her.”
“Didn’t you check!”
“Yeah, I checked.” From the sound of his voice, Detective-Sergeant Graham still didn’t believe what he’d found. “I better start at the beginning. . . .” He told how he’d run into Hania Wojotowicz and how she’d listed the contents of the purse, how she’d called up the inmate file, how the description had fit Vicki Nelson even though the name had said Terri Hanover. “They picked her up on a skinbeef, Mike, against a twelve-year-old boy. You’ve never read such a crock of shit. She was on something, they don’t know what, so they stuck her in Special Needs.”
“They drugged her! The bastards drugged her!”
“Yeah. If it’s her.” But he didn’t sound like he had any doubts. “Who are they, Mike? What the fuck is going on?”
“I can’t tell you. Where is she exactly—now?”
The pause said Dave knew exactly why Celluci asked. “She’s still in Special Needs,” he said at last. “D Range. Cell three. But I didn’t actually see her. They wouldn’t let me onto the range. I don’t know it’s her.”
“I do.”
“This has gone too far.” He swallowed, once, hard. “I’m talking to Cantree tomorrow.”
“No! Dave, you talk to Cantree about any of this and you’ll be ass deep in it with the rest of us. Just keep your mouth shut for a little while longer. Please.”
“A little while longer,” Dave repeated and sighed again. “All right, partner, how long?”
“I don’t know. Maybe you should take that vacation time you’ve got coming.”
“Yeah. Maybe I should.”
The quiet click as Dave Graham hung up his end of the line sounded through the apartment.
Henry came out of the bedroom and the two men stared at each other.
“We have to get her out,” Celluci said. He could see only a pale oval of face in the darkness. I’ll do anything I must to get her out no matter how little I like it. I’ll even work with you because I need your strength and speed.
“Yes,” Henry agreed. The “detention centers” I know are centuries in the past. I need your knowledge. My feelings here are not important; she is.
The silent subtext echoed so loudly between them it was amazing it didn’t alert the police watching the building and bring them racing inside.
Fifteen
“All right, when the lights go out, you go over the wall, across the yard, in the emergency exit and . . .”
“Up three flights of stairs and through the first emergency door on my left. I remember your instructions, Detective.” Henry stepped back from his BMW and looked down at Celluci who still sat in the driver’s seat. “Are you certain you can get near enough to the generator?”
“Don’t worry about me, you just be ready to move. You won’t have much time. The moment the power goes off, all four guards will move to A Range to start emergency lockup. Vicki’s in D; they’ll do that last. You’ll also have to deal with the other women on the range; it’s just turned eight, so they won’t be in the cells yet. . . . ”
“Michael.”
Celluci started. Something in the sound of his name stopped the flow of words and brought his head up. Although he knew the other man’s eyes were hazel, they seemed much darker than hazel could be as if they’d absorbed some of the night.
“I want her out of there as much as you do. We will be successful. She will be freed. One way or another.”
The words, the tone, the man himself, left no room for argument, no room for doubt. Celluci nodded, comforted in spite of himself and, as he had once before in a farmhouse kitchen, he thought that he would be willing to follow . . . a romance writer. Yeah, sure. But the protest had little force behind it. He wet his lips and dropped his gaze, aware as he did that Fitzroy had allowed it and, strangely enough, found himself not resenting the other’s strength. “You won’t have much time before the emergency system kicks in, so you’ll have to be fast.”
“I know.”
He put the car into gear. “So, uh, be careful.”
“I will.” Henry watched the car drive away, watched until the taillights disappeared around a comer, then walked slowly across the street toward the detention center. His pants and crepe-soled shoes were black, but his turtleneck sweater was a deep, rich burgundy; no point in looking more like a second story man than necessary. He carried a dark wool cap to pull over his hair the instant he started over the wall as he’d learned early after his change that a pale-haired vampire was at a disadvantage when it came to moving through the darkness.
From not very far away came the sound of traffic, of a radio, of a baby crying; people who paid no attention to the knowledge that other people were locked in cages only a short distance from where they lived their lives. Or perhaps they’ve forgotten they know. Henry reached out and lightly touched the outer wall, sensitive eyes turned away from the harsh glare of the floodlights.
Dungeons, prisons, detention centers—there was little to choose between them. He could feel the misery, the defiance, the anger, the despair; the bricks were soaked in it. Every life that had been held here had left a dark impression. Henry had never understood the theory that torture by confinement was preferable to death.
“They’re given a chance to change,” Vicki’d protested when a news article on capital punishment had started the argument.
“You’ve been inside your country’s prisons, ” he’d pointed out. “What chance for change do they offer? I have never lived in a time that so enjoyed lying to itself.”
“Maybe you’d rather we followed good King Hal’s example and chained prisoners to a wall until it was time to cut off their heads?”
“I never said the old ways were better, Vicki, but at least my father never insulted those he arrested by insisting he did it for their own good.”
“He did it for his own good,” she’d snorted and had refused to discuss the matter further.
Having found the place he’d go over the wall, Henry moved on until he crossed the line between the floodlights and the night, then he turned and waited. He had faith in Celluci’s ability to cut the power, more faith he suspected than Celluci had in his ability to go into the detention center and bring Vicki out—but then, he’d had a lot more time to learn to see around the blinkers jealousy insisted be worn.
They were very much alike, Michael Celluci and Vicki Nelson, both wrapped up in their ideas of The Law. There was one major difference Henry had noticed between them; Vicki broke The Law for ideals, Celluci broke it for her. She, not justice, had kept him silent last August in London. It was her personally, not injustice, that drove him tonight—however little he liked what they were about to do.
It probably wouldn’t have helped, Henry reflected, if he’d told Celluci that he had attempted this sort of thing before. . . .
Henry had not been in England when Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, had been arrested, and between the time it took for news to reach him and the complications laid on travel by his nature, he didn’t arrive in London until January eighth; two days before the execution. He spent that first night frantically gathering information. An hour after sunset on the ninth, having quickly fed down by the docks, he stood and stared up at the black stone walls of the Tower.
Originally, Surrey had been given a suite overlooking the river, but an attempt to escape by climbing down the privy at low tide had ensured his removal to less congenial, interior accommodations. From where he stood, Henry could just barely see the flicker of light in Surrey’s window.
“No,” he murmured to the night, “I don’t imagine you can sleep, you
arrogant, bloody fool, not with the block awaiting you in the morning.”
All things considered, he decided there was no real need to go over the wall—although he rather regretted the loss of the flamboyant gesture—and moved, a shadow within the shadows, past the guards and into the halls of the Tower. At Surrey’s door, he raised the heavy iron bar and slipped silently inside, pulling the door closed behind him. Unless things had changed a great deal since his days at court, the guards would not bother them before dawn and by dawn they would be far away.
He stood for a moment drinking in the sight and scent of the dearest friend he had had in life, realizing how much he had missed him. The slight figure, dressed all in black, sat at a crude table by the narrow window, a tallow candle his only light, a heavy iron shackle locked around one slim ankle and chained in turn to a bolt in floor. He had been writing—Henry could smell the fresh ink—but he sat now with his dark head pillowed on his arm and despair written across the line of his shoulders. Henry felt a fist close around his heart and he had to stop himself from rushing forward and catching the other man up in a near hysterical embrace.
Instead, he took a single step away from the door and softly called, “Surrey.”
The dark head jerked erect. “Richmond?” The young earl spun around, eyes wide with terror and when he saw who stood within his cell he threw himself against the far wall with a rattle of chain and strangled cry. “Am I so near to death,” he moaned, “that the dead come calling?”
Henry smiled. “I’m as flesh and blood as you are. More so, you’ve lost a lot of weight.”
“Yes, well, the cook does his poor best but it’s not what I’m used to.” One long-fingered hand brushed the air with a dismissive gesture Henry well remembered and then rose to cover Surrey’s eyes. “I’m losing my mind. I make jokes with a ghost.”
“I am no ghost.”
“Prove it.”
“Touch me then.” Henry walked forward, hand outstretched.
“And lose my soul? I will not.” Surrey sketched the sign of the cross and squared his shoulders. “Come any closer and I’ll call for the guards.”
Henry frowned, this was not going the way he’d planned. “All right, I’ll prove it without your touch.” He thought a moment. “Do you remember what you said when we watched the execution of my father’s second wife, your cousin, Anne Boleyn? You told me that although her condemnation was an inevitable matter of state business, you pitied the poor wretch and you hoped they’d let her laugh in hell for you’d always thought her laugh more beautiful than her face.”
“Richmond’s spirit would know that, for I said it while he lived.”
“All right,” Henry repeated, thinking, it’s a good thing I came early, this could take all night. “You wrote this after I died and, trust me, Surrey, your poems are not yet read in heaven.” He cleared his throat and softly recited, “The secret thoughts, imparted with such trust,/The wanton talk, the diverse change of play,/The friendship sworn, each promise kept so just,/Wherewith we passed the winter night away . . .”
“ ‘ . . . That place of bliss,/the graceful, gay companion, who with me shared,/the jolly woes, the hateless short debate . . .’ ” Surrey stepped away from the wall, his body trembling with enough force to vibrate the chain he wore. “I wrote that for you.”
“I know.” He had copies of nearly everything Surrey had written; the earl’s flamboyant lifestyle meant his servants often waited for their pay and were, therefore, open to earning a little extra.
“ ‘Proud Windsor, where I, in just and joy/With a King’s son my childish years did pass . . .’ Richmond?” Eyes welling, Surrey flung himself forward and Henry caught him up in a close embrace.
“You see,” he murmured into the dusky curls, “I have flesh, I live, and I’ve come to get you out of here.”
After an incoherent moment of mingled joy and grief, Surrey pushed away and, swiping at his cheeks with his palm, he looked his old friend up and down. “You haven’t changed,” he said, fear touching his expression again. “You look no different than you did when you . . . than you did at seventeen.”
“You look very little different yourself.” Although eleven years had added flesh and he now wore the mustache and long curling beard fashionable at court, Surrey’s face and manner were so little changed that Henry had no difficulty believing he’d gotten himself into the mess he had. His beloved friend had been wild, reckless, and immature at nineteen. Mere months short of thirty he was wild, reckless, and immature still. “As to my lack of change, well, it’s a long story.”
Surrey flung himself down on the bed and with difficulty lifted the shackled leg up onto the pallet. “I’m not going anywhere,” he pointed out with a sardonic lift of ebony brows.
And he wasn’t, Henry realized, not until his curiosity was satisfied. If he wanted to save him, he’d have to tell him the truth. “You’d gone to Kenninghall, to spend time with Frances, and His Majesty sent me to Sherifhutton,” he began.
“I remember.”
“Well, I met a woman . . .”
Surrey laughed, and the laughter held, in spite of his outward calm, a hint of hysteria. “So I’d heard.”
Henry was thankful he could no longer blush. In the past that tone had turned him scarlet. This was the first time he had told the story since his change; he’d not expected it to be as difficult as it was and he walked over to the desk so he could look out into the night as he talked, one hand shuffling the papers Surrey had left. When he finished, he turned and faced the rude bed.
Surrey was sitting on its edge, head buried in his hands. As though he felt the weight of Henry’s gaze, he slowly looked up.
The force of the rage and grief that twisted his face drove Henry back a step. “Surrey?” he asked, suddenly 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.