part of the entourage of the queen’s husband, Peter Threadgill. When one of the Louisiana vampires bumped into an Arkansas vampire, the Arkansan snarled and for a second I thought there would be a fight in the corridor over a slight accident.
Jeesh, I’d be glad to get out of here. The atmosphere was tense.
Chester stopped before a door that didn’t look any different from all the other closed doors, except for the two whacking big vampires outside it. The two must have been considered giants in their day, since they stood perhaps six foot three. They looked like brothers, but maybe it was just their size and mien, and the color of their chestnut hair, that sparked the comparison: big as boulders, bearded, with pony-tails that trailed down their backs, the two looked like prime meat for the pro wrestling circuit. One had a huge scar across his face, acquired before death, of course. The other had had some skin disease in his original life. They weren’t just display items; they were absolutely lethal.
(By the way, some promoter had had the idea for a vampire wrestling circuit a couple of years before, but it went down in flames immediately. At the first match, one vamp had ripped another’s arm off, on live TV. Vamps don’t get the concept of exhibition fighting.)
These two vampires were hung with knives, and each had an ax in his belt. I guess they figured if someone had penetrated this far, guns weren’t going to make a difference. Plus their own bodies were weapons.
“Bert, Bert,” Chester said, nodding to each one in turn. “This here’s the Stackhouse woman; the queen wants to see her.”
He turned and walked away, leaving me with the queen’s bodyguards.
Screaming didn’t seem like a good idea, so I said, “I can’t believe you both have the same name. Surely he made a mistake?”
Two pairs of brown eyes focused on me intently. “I am Sigebert,” the scarred one said, with a heavy accent I couldn’t identify. He said his name as See-ya-bairt. Chester was using a very Americanized version of what must be a very old name. “Dis my brodder, Wybert.”
This is my brother, Way-bairt? “Hello,” I said, trying not to twitch. “I’m Sookie Stackhouse.”
They seemed unimpressed. Just then, one of the pinned vampires squeezed past, casting a look of scarcely veiled contempt at the brothers, and the atmosphere in the corridor became lethal. Sigebert and Wybert watched the vamp, a tall woman in a business suit, until she rounded a corner. Then their attention switched back to me.
“The queen is . . . busy,” Wybert said. “When she wants you in her room, the light, it will shine.” He indicated a round light set in the wall to the right of the door.
So I was stuck here for an indefinite time—until the light, it shone. “Do your names have a meaning? I’m guessing they’re, um, early English?” My voice petered out.
“We were Saxons. Our fadder went from Germany to England, you call now,” Wybert said. “My name mean Bright Battle.”
“And mine, Bright Victory,” Sigebert added.
I remembered a program I’d seen on the History Channel. The Saxons eventually became the Anglo-Saxons and later were overwhelmed by the Normans. “So you were raised to be warriors,” I said, trying to look intelligent.
They exchanged glances. “There was nothing else,” Sigebert said. The end of his scar wiggled when he talked, and I tried not to stare. “We were sons of war leader.”
I could think of a hundred questions to ask them about their lives as humans, but standing in the middle of a hallway in an office building in the night didn’t seem the time to do it. “How’d you happen to become vampires?” I asked. “Or is that a tacky question? If it is, just forget I said anything. I don’t want to step on any toes.”
Sigebert actually glanced down at his feet, so I got the idea that colloquial English wasn’t their strong suit. “This woman . . . very beautiful . . . she come to us the night before battle,” Wybert said haltingly. “She say . . . we be stronger if she . . . have us.”
They looked at me inquiringly, and I nodded to show I understood that Wybert was saying the vampire had implied her interest was in bedding them. Or had they understood she meant to bleed them? I couldn’t tell. I thought it was a mighty ambitious vampire who would take on these two humans at