Charles' Choice (Penny's Choice) (9 page)

“If all you say is true, then we will give you our word,” Morrigan said. The hag began to lighten in her appearance until she was nothing more than a wisp of
fabric and light. She returned to her spooky apparition
form
and then floated back off into the night.

“Well, that was exciting,” Penny said, shaking again. “I think I’ve had enough crazy creatures for one night.” She put her head back on Thomas shoulder.

“You think you have enough left in for one
more crazy
creature?” Thomas said, slowly kissing her neck.

“Hmmm, maybe,” Penny said as she stroked Thomas hair. He continued to kiss down her neck, reaching her collar bone.

“Yuck,” Thomas said, suddenly pulling away from Penny’s neck. Penny was about to question him when the familiar smell rotting off flesh wafted up through her nose.

“Okay, I think that we need to get out here and back to the
room
,”
Penny said and got up off the ground. She was wet from the grass and peat of the Irish hills. “I’m a mess anyway.”

“Sorry, banshees are nature creatures. They don’t have tables and chairs.”

“I was thinking more along the lines of a bed,” Penny said, putting her arms around Thomas’s neck.

Penny was glad to have to the banshee behind them. The banshees would be a welcome, but creepy addition to their crew. But at that moment, all she wanted to do was spend the night with Thomas. He was able to help her forget all of the problems that seemed to follow her around
the world.

Penny tossed in her bed. Her dreams were getting worse again. For a while when her and Thomas were first together her dreams got better, but now that they were going to be dealing with the Brotherhood again, the dreams had returned with a vengeance.

“Penny, sweetheart,” Thomas said, shaking her slightly and rousing her from her sleep.

Penny rolled over and looked at Thomas through her sleepy eyes. She hoped that he hadn’t noticed that she was having another dream. “Morning,” She said, stretching her arms out behind her.

Thomas held out a bagel and a cup of coffee. Penny sat up in bed and placed breakfast on her lap. She looked out through the window; dusk had just settled into the sky and the stars were beginning to dot the night.

“You were out today,” Thomas said, sitting on the bed next to her. “I think you slept like thirteen hours.”

“I think I needed it,” Penny said. She rubbed her eyes, trying to make her eyes wake up. She sipped on her coffee and closed her eyes again. Her body did not want to get up.

“I would have let you sleep longer,” Thomas
ran his hand down her thigh, “but we need to go meet up with the rest.”

“Are they here?” Penny asked, forcing her eyes open.

“No, but they are close,” Thomas said. He got up and put the newly acquired clothes and supplies into a black leather messenger back. “We do need to get
out of here
as soon as possible. Time is ticking on getting Charles back to the Brotherhood in time to save your grandmother.”

“I hate all of this,” Penny said then took a bite of her breakfast. She sat up and placed the bagel and coffee on the night stand and got out bed. “I just want to sit on my grandmother’s porch drinking lemonade.” Penny gulped down the rest of the coffee.
“So, what castle is Charles at?” Penny pulled on a long shirt over her leggings. She chose clothes that would be easy to move and fight in because the way things had been going lately, another fight was always around the corner.

“Well, I have it narrowed down to two,” Thomas said, slinging the bag over his shoulder. “But I think that one is more likely than the other. It isn’t far from here.”

Penny grabbed the rest of her bagel and followed Thomas out of the room.
“How many other races are we going to ask to help?”

“I think just one more
, maybe two
,” Thomas replied, walking down the hall. “I could get more, but I am trying to keep it small and strategic. The less that know…”

“I know, I know, the less that there will be to go wrong,” Penny said. She opened the door the small inn and walked out into the night air. “I won’t bother asking anymore questions either, Mr. tight lips.”

“Good, now get in the car
,
human,” Thomas said with a fake snarl and a goofy look on his face.

“Thomas, you
couldn’t scare a church mouse,” Penny said, swinging into the passenger seat. “Let’s get out of here and find
your
terrifying human little brother.”

“Oh that was a low blow,” Thomas said, starting up the car and speeding off down the road.

“Oh that was a compliment,” Penny said. She put her hand on Thomas leg and squeezed lightly.

After
a short ride the couple reached the Irish coast.
Penny watched the
waves
crash against the rocky, cliffs for a few minutes. A dilapidated castle rose from the sea mist.

Penny assumed that this was their destination, but she had no idea how Thomas knew that his brother was staying here. There were hundreds of castles in Ireland. Why
did Charles
chose this one?

Thomas drove up the long, broken rocky road toward the castle. Several of the towers were crumbling and by
most
standards, it was not the best looking castle. Thomas stopped before they had to cross a
rotting
bridge, more punctuated with
holes than actual material.

“Are you sure this is the place?” Penny said, getting out of the car. She looked over the cliff and shrunk back. It did have an element of Charles to it. It was a fierce, mysterious looking place.

“I can smell him,” Thomas said, sniffing the air, “and his fish girlfriend.”

“Alright then, tell me that we aren’t going to drive over this rickety, old bridge.” Penny peeked over the edge again. She breathed quick and pulled herself back.  It didn’t take long for vertigo to take over Penny when she looked down.

“No, we’ll walk,” Thomas said, holding out his hand for Penny.

“I think that I’ll just stay here,” Penny said. She took a few steps away from the bridge.

“Come on,” Thomas said, grabbing her hand in his and giving her a very slight tug. “I won’t let you fall.”

“I know you won’t,” Penny said. She looked into Thomas’s eyes. When he was being protective, the green deepened
so his
eyes looked like emeralds.
“I trust you, but it makes me dizzy just getting close to it. I have a thing about bridges.”

“Bridges?”
Thomas said. He put his hands around Penny’s waist as he waited for an explanation.

“Before I had dreams about vampires,” she kissed Thomas on the neck, “I had them about bridges.”

Thomas shook his head and smiled but didn’t make any smart comments. “Alright, princess, you stay here and watch the car. I’ll make it quick.” Thomas made his way across the bridge by carefully picking each step. One time he took a false step and a crumbling rock gave way underneath his foot.

Penny sat back on the top of the car and watched the ocean spray hit the cliffs. She tried to think of the last time that she was alone. Other than when she was asleep, Penny couldn’t think of a single time in the last six months that she had spent even a moment alone. She slid off the hood and made her way to the sparse tree line.

Penny scrambled up a tree nimbly. As a child, she loved climbing the trees in her grandmother’s backyard. Penny was glad to see that
she hadn’t lost her touch. Perhaps because she was in such good shape, the climb was even easier. Penny couldn’t understand why the bridge gave her vertigo, but the top of trees just made her feel exhilarated. Penny sat still in the tree and breathed for a minute.

A twig snapped below her somewhere near in the forest. Penny froze in the tree. It could just be a woodland creature scurrying about the floor. Penny carefully looked down from her perch without drawing attention to
herself
. She didn’t see anything. There was snap and then another. Penny still couldn’t see what was making the noise, but something was definitely coming near her. Penny pulled her body further into the trees foliage. She caught a glimpse of a human head then a body was crouched low to ground.

Penny evened her breathing. She hadn’t been spotted yet. She couldn’t see how the person was dressed, so she didn’t know if they were a legitimate threat or not. She looked out toward the car.

Another man dressed in black fatigues, a long black t-shirt, a
nd a black hat
stood by her car
. He had wooden daggers around his belt and a quiver full of wooden arrows.
Brotherhood.
Penny stilled her body even more with that realization. If she were discovered without the rest of the group, she would surely be dead.

The man, who looked like the leader, looked into the forest and made the motions for his compatriot to leave his cover and join him. The man below Penny got up from his crouch positioned. He exited the forest, but not alone. Eight other agents left the forest and joined the group.

A full contingency?
Penny thought.
This is not good.

Penny watched them for a couple of seconds. She didn’t have piercing vampire ears, so she couldn’t make out what they were saying from her perch in the trees.

What are they up to
? Penny thought, while straining to hear their conversation. One of the agents had taken something out of his
bag and was setting it up. Penny wanted to see what he was doing, but she didn’t want to move. The limbs were thinner up toward the top and she didn’t want to take the chance that one of them would crack or break.

Penny checked her body for weapons. She had three throwing knives: one in her belt and one each in her boots.
Not enough weapons to take out the whole contingency of agents.  Penny had one huge advantage over her enemy, surprise. They must have thought that she went into the castle with Thomas.

The man that was fiddling with his bag handed his finished products to the leader. The leader held it at an angle that allowed Penny to see. It was a bomb, not much bigger than Penny’s thumb. She had seen them used a couple of times while she was in the Brotherhood. While it was small, it would incinerate everything in a ten foot radius. The only issue with the devices was that it gave off a slight smell that a vampire could usually detect.

Suddenly Penny got an idea. Everyone one of the Brotherhood agents was within the ten foot blast radius. She readied a throwing knife
and waited for the agent to attach it to the front of the car. He was going to set the device off before they finished crossing the bridge. As soon he moved away from the explosive, Penny threw her knife at the detonator.

Penny hit her mark and the bomb exploded into a fury of flames. Car doors blew off and the gas tank burst into flames adding to the inferno in front of her. She could feel the heat from the flames in her tree top stand and it almost took her breath away. She had to move her face away from the flaming spectacle. The agents were dead in milliseconds after the flames licked forth from the device.

It took about twenty seconds after the explosion for Thomas and Charli to come bounding across the rickety bridge.
Since the blast, there was even less material in the bridge.

“Penny,” Thomas screamed midway through the bridge. “Penny!”

“Oh, my god,” Charli said, as she came across the threshold of the bridge and surveyed the flaming carnage.

“Penny,” Thomas said, scrambling up to the wreckage. He stopped short when he saw several sets of charred human skeletons.  Penny?” Thomas voice had changed from panic to intrigue.

“Hey,” Penny shouted down from the tree.

“What in
heavens
happened,” Charli asked as she looked at the bones and the cindered remains of the car frame.

“I was just hanging out in this tree,” Penny started to climb down the tree, “when a whole contingency of Brotherhood agents decided to drop in.”

“You were just hanging out in the tree?” Thomas asked, catching Penny as she jumped the rest of the way.

“I was feeling nervous about the bridge,” Penny replied. By now Charles and Lorelei had joined them.

“Holy crap,” Charles said taking his first glimpse at the wreck.

“I think they must have been following Charles,” Penny looked at Charles and Lorelei, “because they were already entrenched in the woods when Thomas and I got here.”

“Crap, they probably know about Lorelei,” Thomas said, wringing his hands. “Maybe that’s okay, though. That doesn’t mean they suspect a multi-species attack.
Nixen
aren’t notorious
ly
offensive
attackers
.”

“No, Lorelei has been very careful to appear human,” Charles said, putting his arm around Lorelei. “We even got her a skirt that hides the watermarks on the bottom.”