Charles' Choice (Penny's Choice) (5 page)

“Well, just recently,” Penny said, thinking about the similarities. Maybe it would be just like Charles being a sperm donor, except that Charles’s children would be the grandchildren of the god of the sea.

A small Nixie walked into the room with a tray. Penny didn’t recognize anything on it and thought that maybe the house servants were serving lunch. She hoped that wasn’t the case because nothing looked even remotely appetizing, despite Penny’s adventurous taste buds.

“Oh Charles,” Lorelei said, swimming over to where Charles was sitting.

“Oh, no wait, wait,” Charles said
,
putting up his hands. “I’m not ready just yet to do this.”

Lorelei chuckled slightly as she took a sponge off the tray. “I was going to fix up your wound.”

Charles looked at his arm. In the midst of the hustle of the escape he had forgotten that he was grazed by a Brotherhood arrow.
“Huh, I had almost forgotten about that.” Charles thought back to the fight.

“Silly human,” Lorelei said as she
carefully cleaned the wound with the sponge.

Charles cringed as she cleaned it. Something on the sponge made the wound sting. But he was trying to appear tough so he could impress Lorelei.

“I think you need to press harder,” Thomas joked. “I don’t think you’re hurting him enough.”

Charles glared at his brother. “Let the woman do her job,” he said.

Lorelei smiled as she grabbed a pot of salve from the tray. “You don’t have to be so brave,” Lorelei said as she spread the salve over his wound. The pain immediately subsided as the thick medicine worked its way into Charles’s arm. “You must be exhausted.” Lorelei spoke to the servant in German. Another servant appeared a minute later with a tray of food.

“I know that it isn’t human food,” Lorelei said, directing the servant to place it on a coral table, “but we don’t often have human visitors. But I know you need to eat to regain your strength.”

“Thank you,” Penny said as she looked over the offerings.
The plate looked like an elegantly dressed sushi dinner. A couple small fish were nestled among slices of larger raw fish and seaweed. What looked to be several split sea urchins sat in the middle of the
plate.
Penny contemplated for a minute and then took a slice of pink fish that she hoped was salmon. Charles looked over the food and cringed.

“What’s the matter Chuck?” Penny asked with a smile. “Don’t see any meat and potatoes?”

“No, it’s okay,” Charles said, looking at Lorelei. “I haven’t always been the most adventurous eater, but thank you for your hospitality.” He took an urchin from the middle and slurped its contents down like soup. “Actually it wasn’t too bad.”

Penny looked down at her slice of fish. If Charles said the food wasn’t too bad, it was probably actually really good. Penny placed the whole piece in her mouth. She started to gag as soon as the first taste hit tongue. It was not salmon and there was some sort of very spicy seasoning on it.

Penny gagged and tried to swallow, but she felt like she was going to throw up. And then there was the other matter that her mouth was on fire. She didn’t know whether she should spit it out or continue to gag it down her throat, so she just started to dance uncomfortably around the room.

“Here,” Thomas said handing her a tissue.
He was trying to hide his smile.

Penny grabbed the tissue and spit out the fish. The servant handed Penny a glass of blue liquid to cool down her throat. Penny gulped it down without a second thought. She was expecting water, but it was a bitter, gelatin-like substance.
Penny spit out the drink in a shower all over the servant.

Penny looked at the servant
horrified.
Then she
looked over at Lorelei and was about
to
profoundly apologize for making such a spectacle over the
Nixen
food, but the mermaid burst out laughing. The rest of the group followed, even the servant started laughing
. Penny started laughing at she got over the horror of spitting up over the help and the fire still burning in her mouth.

The group laughed for almost
five
minutes. After a while, the laughter died down and Charles picked up another sea urchin and handed it to Penny.

“Here, these aren’t so bad,” Charles said, smiling. “I’m glad you tried that piece before I did.”

“Yes, because Penny handled that so gracefully,” Thomas said, rubbing Penny on the back.

“Shut up, you don’t know how spicy that was!” Penny said and then shoved the sea urchin in her mouth. “That one was better.” Penny could have had
bull testicles and thought that they were delicious after that spicy raw fish. The sea urchin still didn’t totally take the taste out of bitter gelatin and spicy fish out of mouth, so she grabbed another half and shoved it in her mouth.
The slimy texture of the sea urchin slightly masked the previous flavor.
Penny collapsed in her chair exhausted from the whole ordeal.

“You all probably need some rest,” Lorelei said, raising
herself
out of the pool. “I know vampires don’t
necessarily
sleep, but perhaps some is in order for tonight?”

“Yes
,
thank you Lorelei,” Thomas said, standing up.

“In the morning I will take you back to the surface
where we can discuss our plans,” Lorelei smiled. “But tonight we rest.”

Penny was beginning to like her a little more. She was offering to help them even though they had just met and
Nixen
and humans – or vampires for that matter – had never been allies before.

“It’s my choice,” Charles yelled. Thomas, Charles, and Penny sat around a table at a local pub discussing the ransom note. There was no time to stop and mourn their father’s death.
After a brief respite at the
Nixen
homeworld
to eat and patch up the wounded, t
hey had less than a week to figure out what they were going to do. Charli and Lorelei decided to stay back in the hotel room. Lorelei
said that she
had been injured slightly and needed to rest.
No one else remembered her being injured, so they assumed that she was just trying to be polite and leave the family to themselves.
Charli just didn’t feel like being around humans.

“But you know it’s a trap,” Penny yelled back at him. “I can’t just let you go back in there because of my grandmother.” The loud argument between the Americans had gathered a lot of looks from neighboring tables. The waitress hanging out behind the bar seemed hesitant to go over to the table and take their orders.

“Look, my job is to protect humans and other innocent creatures,” Charles said, standing up and pounding the table. “You grandmother is about as innocent as they come. Plus she was put in danger because of me.”

“No,” Thomas said, “It was my fault. I didn’t stop the attack on Penny’s family.” He stood up from his chair and got his face right into Charles’s.

“Stop it!” Penny screamed. “It doesn’t matter whose fault this whole mess is. Honestly, I am glad that everything has happened, even though tough.”

Thomas and Charles sat back down in their chairs. They looked at each other before Thomas spoke up again. “We can’t just leave your grandmother there, Penny.”

“Exactly, I’m glad you agree with me,” Charles said, crossing his arms.

“Thomas, you can’t really want to send your brother in there!” Penny argued. “They’ll kill him.”

“I agree, so Charles will go back, but…” Thomas replied, placing a hand on Penny’s, “only as a Trojan horse.”

“You have a plan?” Penny asked. Of course he had a plan. Thomas always had a plan.

“
Yes,” Thomas said, a broad smile appearing on his face. “But it will require your girlfriend’s help.” Thomas looked at Charles.

“She’s not my girlfriend,” Charles said with a huff.

“Well, your baby mamma then,” Thomas said and laughed.

At this point the argument had settled down enough for the waitress to appear at their table.

“Funny,” Charles said, scowling. “There have been no babies.”

“Can I get you anything?” The waitress asked in English.

“Not yet, anyways,” Penny said harassing Charles with Thomas. It served him right for being so surly all the time. She looked down at her menu and ordered the most German sounding dish.

“I’ll have the Schnitzel,” Charles said, not even looking down at his menu because he ordered Schnitzel at every restaurant. “And a side of those noodle things…”

“
Spaetzle
,” Penny said, rolling her eyes. “Those noodle things are called
Spaetzle
.”

Charles shrugged his shoulders and ordered a local beer to go with his meal.

“Nothing for me,” Thomas said, smiling politely at the waitress. Penny knew that he was more interested in the waitress than the menu.

“Really, could you be more obvious that you are a vampire?” Penny hissed at Thomas as the waitress walked away.

“You are paranoid,” Thomas said, looking into Penny’s eyes. “Do you lust after every sandwich that you come across? Even if you just ate recently until you were stuffed?” Thomas wrapped his fingers around Penny’s seductively and she just melted.

“Okay,” Charles said, breaking up the
lovey
dovey
moment. “I am sure that Lorelei will help, but really, what is a water creature going to do against the Brotherhood?” Charles asked.

“You’ll see,” Thomas said with a smirk on his face. “We’ll have to gather a few more allies if we want to make a direct assault on the Winchester Mystery House.”

“Ha, Thomas, you are so funny,” Charles said. The Winchester Mystery House was the main base of the Brotherhood and was specifically designed to confuse and keep out vampires and other supernatural creatures. A direct assault on the house was a suicide mission.

“Nope, I’m actually being serious for once in my life,” Thomas said, drawing on the table with his finger. “I’m tired of running aren’t you?”

Yeah, but the Winchester?”
Charles and Penny looked at each other, wondering if Thomas had finally lost his genius brain to insanity.

“Look, if we have the right allies, we can do it,” Thomas said, scribbling some notes on a napkin
.
“I
f we band all the supernatural creatures together.”

“You make that sound so easy,” Charles said, continuing to argue with his big brother.

“Hey, that might not be so hard with you on are side,” Penny said, cutting Charles off. “You remember how Lorelei responded when she found out who you were.”

“Exactly,” Thomas said, not looking up from his writing. “Plus, I have a killer plan.”

“Are you going to tell us what that killer plan is?” Penny asked, taking a look at what Thomas was writing. Most of the words were unfamiliar to her. She assumed that they were names of races that she still hadn’t heard of yet.

The Waitress returned with Charles’s Beer. “Are you sure you don’t even want something to drink?” she asked Thomas again.

“Well, I suppose you could bring me whatever he is drinking,” Thomas replied pointing to Charles’s glass.

The waitress left and returned quickly. Thomas was still quiet on what it was that he was planning.

“So, what’s the plan?” Penny asked again.

“I think that I am going to keep that to myself,” Thomas said as he pushed the glass of beer in Charles’s direction. To avoid suspicion, sometimes Thomas would order human food and give it to Penny or Charles. Penny was sure that she had gained at least ten pounds from the vampire leftovers. “In case if something goes wrong.”

“In case if something goes wrong?” Penny repeated. “You mean in case Charles or I are kidnapped by the Brotherhood?”

“Yes,” Thomas said, adding another foreign name to the napkin list.

When the waitress brought their food out, the conversation ceased as Charles and Penny gobbled down their food. It had been over a day since they had been able to eat real food. The fish offered by Lorelei’s family wasn’t quite what either of them had considered edible.

“So what part of the plan do we get to know,” Charles asked with a mouthful of German noodles.

“You, Charles, get to know that you need to go back to the
Nixen
and
have them
pledge their support to you for a water assault on the Winchester,” Thomas said as he got money out of his wallet for the dinner. He kept looking up at the window. He tucked the napkin with the list of creatures into his pocket.