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 the same time.
"She did not say we only fight at night after that," Sigebert said, shrugging to show that there had been a catch they hadn't understood. "We did not ask plenty questions. We too eager!" And he smiled. Okay, nothing so scary as a vampire left with only his fangs. It was possible Sigebert had more teeth in the back of his mouth, ones I couldn't see from my height, but Chester's plentiful-though-crooked teeth had looked super in comparison.
"That must have been a very long time ago," I said, since I couldn't think of anything else to say. "How long have you worked for the queen?"
Sigebert and Wybert looked at each other. "Since that night," Wybert said, astonished I hadn't understood. "We are hers."
My respect for the queen, and maybe my fear of the queen, escalated. Sophie-Anne, if that was her real name, had been brave, strategic, and busy in her career as a vampire leader. She'd brought them over and kept them with her, in a bond that—the one whose name I wasn't going to speak even to myself—had explained to me was stronger than any other emotional tie, for a vampire.
To my relief, the light shone green in the wall.
Sigebert said, "Go now," and pushed open the heavy door. He and Wybert gave me matching nods of farewell as I walked over the threshold and into a room that was like any executive's office anywhere.
Sophie-Anne Leclerq, Queen of Louisiana, and a male vampire were sitting at a round table piled with papers. I'd met the queen once before, when she'd come to my place to tell me about my cousin's death. I hadn't noticed then how young she must have been when she died, maybe no more than fifteen. She was an elegant woman, perhaps four inches shorter than my height of five foot six, and she was groomed down to the last eyelash. Makeup, dress, hair, stockings, jewelry—the whole nine yards.
The vampire at the table with her was her male counterpart. He wore a suit that would have paid my cable bill for a year, and he was barbered and manicured and scented until he almost wasn't a guy any more. In my neck of the woods, I didn't often see men so groomed. I guessed this was the new king. I wondered if he'd died in such a state; actually, I wondered if the funeral home had cleaned him up like that for his funeral, not knowing that his descent below ground was only temporary. If that had been the case, he was younger than his queen. Maybe age wasn't the only requirement, if you were aiming to be royalty.
There were two other people in the room. A short man stood about three feet behind the queen's chair, his legs apart, his hands clasped in front of him. He had close-cut white-blond hair and bright blue eyes. His face lacked maturity; he looked like a large child, but with a man's shoulders. He was wearing a suit, and he was armed with a saber and a gun.
Behind the man at the table stood a woman, a vampire, dressed all in red; slacks, T-shirt, Converses. Her preference was unfortunate, because red was not her color. She was Asian, and I thought she'd come from Vietnam—though it had probably been called something else then. She had very short unpainted nails, and a terrifying sword strapped to her back. Apparently, her hair had been cut off at chin length by a pair of rusty scissors. Her face was the unenhanced one God had given her.
Since I hadn't had a briefing on the correct protocol, I dipped my head to the queen, said, "Good to see you again, ma'am," and tried to look pleasantly at the king while doing the head-dip thing again. The two standees, who must be aides or bodyguards, received smaller nods. I felt like an idiot, but I didn't want to ignore them. However, they didn't have a problem with ignoring me, once they'd given me an all-over threat assessment.