Charles' Choice (Penny's Choice) (8 page)

“Well, I hope that it is just passionate with me,” Penny said, winking. “I hope you bite all those little boys politely.”

“Oh, are you and Charles ever going to let go of that? I don't eat little boys, just young men,” Thomas said lowering his voice. “And I just have a little nibble.”

“Oh come on now,” Penny said, getting up from her chair. “You know that Charles and I have to take advantage of whatever we can to pick on you...with your quick wit and all.”

Thomas paid the bill generously despite the grumpy waitress and walked after Penny. “We're not going to take a car,” Thomas said, grabbing Penny's arm and redirecting her. “The Banshees are luddites.”

“What?” Penny asked. Sometimes Thomas used words that were way above her comprehension level. Although, her vocabulary had grown by leaps and bounds since she had met Thomas.

“A luddite is someone who is afraid of technology...basically,” Thomas sa
id. He walked in front of Penny and slid between two small houses and headed up a hill.

Penny followed Thomas reluctantly; she wasn’t quite sure what she had gotten herself into this time. Charles was back in Germany probably sunning himself with beautiful mermaids and here she was in a desolate Irish town tracking down a creature that even a vampire thought was scary.

“So how long of a walk is it to their…hideout?” Penny asked, catching up to the tall vampire.

“There’s an old Celtic burial mound not
too
far away from here where they like to rest,” Thomas said, still in a hushed tone.

“Is someone following us?” Penny asked when she noticed that Thomas was still whispering.

“No, but we are going through a croft right now and the farmer is out tonight.”

“For goodness sakes, could you please stop using so many big words?” Penny said, exasperated. Didn’t he know that not everyone was a genius with a
vampiric
photographic memory?

“Sorry,” Thomas said giving Penny a smile, “I have to harass you somehow.
A farm.
It’s just a type of farm.”

“K. Watch out for the farmer
,” Penny
said. She walked exaggeratedly on her tips toes. Thomas rolled his eyes and pushed her over.
Penny got up and dusted herself off. “Aren’t they going to notice when the banshees start wailing?”

“Nah, banshees don’t always wail like that,” Thomas said, brushing off the last of the grass on Penny backside. “Besides, the people around here are pretty used to the sound. Some of the older more superstitious folks still say it is banshees, but most people nowadays say it is a natural occurrence from the underground springs around here.”

“Humans will do just about anything to convince themselves that they are the only sentient beings on the planet,” Penny said.

“
Oooh
, you used a big word!”

Penny shoved Thomas playfully, but he didn’t budge.

“They’re just over the next hill,” Thomas said as he reached the peak of a hill.

“Do we need to identify ourselves,” Penny said, suddenly getting very nervous.

“Oh, no.
They have a great sense…” Thomas said, stopping trying to find the right word.

“Smell?”
Penny said, wondering if they had sense like vampires.

“Ha, ha, no.
Their sense of smell is pretty deadened from the smell of rotting flesh,” Thomas said, wrinkling his nose like he already smelled the decomposition. Penny sniffed the air, but she didn’t have the keen sense that Thomas did.

“From being in a graveyard?”
Penny said, confused. She assumed that there wouldn’t be much decomposing left to do in ancient burial grounds.

“No, from themselves,” Thomas said, gagging.

Suddenly the wind shifted and Penny got a brief whiff of what Thomas
smelled
. It wasn’t bad enough to make her gag, but
wasn’t
something that she would want to wear as a perfume.

“They are like Zombies or something,” Penny said. She smiled as Thomas plugged his nose.

“No, they’re more ghost like, but the smell is a self-defense mechanism,” Thomas said with his nose still plugged.

“Against vampires?”
Penny said, giggling. “Is holding your nose actually helping? Or does it just make you look stupid?”

“Give it a few more steps and you’ll be doing the same thing,” Thomas said. He released his nose, but Penny could tell that he was no longer breathing. That meant Thomas couldn’t talk but another couple sentences until his lungs ran out of air and he would have to breathe again. Penny was about to make fun of him again and try to make him have to take another breath, when the smell hit her hard.

“Oh, yuck,” Penny said, bending over. Thomas just smiled. Penny wished that she had the same ability to hold her breath indefinitely like Thomas. The smell was almost unbearable. “I think that I might throw up.”

“Don’t worry, the s
mell
will go away in just a minute; it’s just the first line of defense.”

“Great defense,” Penny said, holding her nose like Thomas had a minute ago. “If I didn’t have to meet with them, I would turn right back around.” The two walked another couple steps and the smell subsided.

“Get ready,” Thomas said, grabbing onto Penny’s hand.

“For what?”
Penny asked, looking around.

“For the second line of defense,” Thomas said, looking into her eyes.

The air became deathly cold. Penny shivered as goose bumps dotted her arm. “This isn’t so bad,” Penny said, shivering. Then a shrill screech echoed through the night. It sounded like it was coming from everywhere. Penny froze, anxiously looking around her. She took a step back as another deathly screech filled the night air.

“Don’t worry,” Thomas said, “They’re bark is much worse than their bite.”

Penny was beginning
to understand why Thomas had asked her if she wanted to stay back. She was scared silly and she had not even yet met one of the banshees.

“Hello,” Thomas called out into the stillness. “We’re here as friends.” He stopped for a moment. Another shriek pierced the still air. Thomas rolled his eyes like he was just shrugging of the posturing of a two year old. “Come on, stop that shrieking now. I’m undead too.
Doesn’t bother me in the least.”

A light grew in the distance and energy hummed all around them in the night air. The light started to take form and then wind rushed toward them. A furry of light, tattered
cloth,
and angry feelings flew at Penny, but dissipated upon impact. Penny threw herself into Thomas’s arms, trembling with horror.

“Okay, but my girlfriend is human,” Thomas said gripping Penny tightly. “So I’d appreciate it if you didn’t
give
her a heart attack. I rather like her blood.”

“Vampire?” a shrill feminine voiced said into the wind. Penny couldn’t tell where it was coming from. She kept her head buried deep within Thomas’s arms. She didn’t want to look to see what was materializing in front of them.

“Yes,” Thomas said. While he spoke to the banshee, he caressed Penny’s hair to keep her calm. “W
e
come here seeking your help against the Brotherhood.”

“We avoid the Brotherhood at all cost,” the banshee replied. Her voice sent shivers down Penny’s spine.

“Yes, ma’am,” Thomas said, being as polite as he could. “But we
’re uniting under the D
efector.”

“The Defector is a hero,” she said, her voice lowering into a more manageable tone for Penny. “But he is not enough.”

“We want to destroy the Brotherhood completely, so that we can live in peace,” Thomas continued to reason with the spirit.

The spirit just chuckled.

“You laugh, but we already have the
Nixen
, djinn, vampires, and werewolves ready to fight,” Thomas said.

“That is truly impressive,” the banshee said. Her voice was now sweet and feminine.

Penny peeked out from Thomas arms and saw that there was an old woman standing in front of them. She was an ugly, old hag that resembled all of the horrible witches from Grimm fairytales, but she was not nearly as frightening as the being she was before. She was manageably scary.

Penny tried to smile, but it looked more like a grimace. She looked down at the peat growing on the ground.

“Dear, I am sorry that we frightened you earlier,” she said. “I am Morrigan, leader of the Banshee’s.”

“The Morrigan?
Thomas asked, looking very impressed. “I was just hoping to talk to any Banshee.”

“You entered my home, not just any banshee’s,” Morrigan said with a chuckle.

“I guess that would explain the extra spectacle,” Thomas said. He still had his hand on Penny’s back for encouragement.

“You can never be too careful now,” Morrigan said. She sat down on the ground and motioned for Thomas and Penny to do the same.
“The Brotherhood has become larger and more vigilant in times that are becoming increasingly hard for us to hide.”

“At least they aren’t hunting you down specifically,” Penny said.

“Yes, with the Defector in your midst, you are the highest priority,” she said.
She sat still for a moment. Her wrinkles creased around her moles and random facial hairs when she thought.
“You know that we cannot make a direct assault on the Winchester.”

“We can if we have an inside man,” Thomas said. He smiled. Charles was his pocket ace in more than one way.

“An inside man?”
The banshee seemed suddenly interested.

“We were attacked in Berlin,” Thomas said. “My father was killed with an arrow that was used to deliver the Defector a note.” Penny knew that the death of his father was hard on him, but that he was going to use the difficulty to fuel his mission to save Penny’s grandmother and defeat the Brotherhood for good.

“I am sorry to hear that,” Morrigan said. The banshee was much politer than Penny had anticipated. The leader of the banshees acted more like a grandmother than
the wraith queen she looked like.

“It was a ransom note for my grandmother,” Penny said, wringing her hands.

“And the term
s
?”
Morrigan asked.

“Charles returns and they release her grandmother,” Thomas said, pulling the note out of his pocket. His father’s blood still speckled its surface.

The Morrigan took the note in her hands and read it slowly. “Do they think that he will just return like that after they killed his father?” She read it over again. “Do you think that they will kill him or
reinstate
him?”

“We’re hoping that they will imprison him first,” Thomas said. “I have a plan to make it look like his family turned on him.”

“You do?” Penny asked. “When were you going to tell
me?
”

“Remember the less that individual parts know until the last minute the better.”

“So, Charles will seem to have rejoined the Brotherhood. That will make them happy I believe. It will prove their point that our kind is evil,” Morrigan said and then stopped to think for a moment. “Who else are you enlisting?”

“We are on our way to India to speak with the
Rakshashai
,” Thomas said. He took the ransom note back from the banshee. When Penny looked at the note, there was no blood left on it.

“Wait, where did the blood go?”
Penny asked, ripping the paper out of Thomas’s hands.

“Ah, so you see my special talent,” Morrigan said.

“You make blood disappear?” Penny asked that seemed like a rather odd talent to Penny.

Thomas laughed at Penny’s remark. “Oh Penny, how I love thee,” he said taking her hand in his. “Do you trust me?”

“Yes.” Penny nodded.

“This is going to hurt for a second,” Thomas said as he dug his fingernail into Penny’s hand, gashing it from the top of her index finger to the start of her thumb.

“
Ow
,” Penny said as she watched the blood flow out of the cut on her hand. “What was that for?”

“If I may,” Morrigan said, holding out her
crooked fingers. She took Penny’s bleeding hand and folded them in her wrinkled fingers. As soon as Penny’s hand touched the banshee, the pain began to subside. A second later when Morrigan released her hand, the pain had vanished and the long gash down her hand was nothing more than a slight scar.

“Wow, that is something,” Penny said as she inspected her hand. The scar was beginning to fade as she spoke. She looked at Thomas and then grabbed his arm and pinched him as hard as her human finger could handle.

“
Ow
,” Thomas said, scowling at her. “You said you trusted me.”

“Why didn’t you use your own hand, Genius?” Penny scowled back at Thomas.

Thomas just shrugged like he forgot that he could use himself as a guinea pig.
“I guess that I just wanted to
smell your blood again.” He flashed his charming smile and then turned his attention back to the banshee. “So do we have your cooperation?”