Charles' Choice (Penny's Choice) Page 3

  “Thomas, Thomas,” Penny said, panicked, “What’s wrong?” Lorelei walked through the stone wall and Penny quickly followed her. “Wow.”

  Penny stood on the edge of a large precipice overlooking a land flowing with waterfalls and light producing glimmering rocks. In the middle of the waterfalls was a small city made mostly out of coral. She could see the Nixen wandering the streets. Some were walking on legs on dry land and others were swimming in water channels. The whole cavern was brightly colored and glimmering.

  Charli and Charles walked through and were immediately struck with the same amazement as Thomas and Penny.

  “Wow is right,” Charles said looking over the beautiful vista.

  “Welcome to my home,” Lorelei said, sweeping her hand over the city and surrounding area.

  “Are you sure that we will be welcome here?” Thomas asked with his eyes still glued to the sparkling coral city.

  “Well, I just had to come back with human sperm,” Lorelei said, smiling. She patted Charles on the shoulder. “And I got the best I could find!”

  “I’m not going to be kept here, am I?” Charles said, looking suspiciously at the Nixie.

  “Oh goodness,” Lorelei giggled, “no. You will be free to go. I think you have a mutual enemy to destroy.”

  “But, he needs to ‘donate’ first?” Thomas said between laughs.

  Charles slugged Thomas in the shoulder, but immediately regretted it. “Ow,” Charles said, massaging his hand.

  “Really, little brother,” Thomas said, “you should know better by now.”

  “Well, I would hope you would be willing to help us out,” Lorelei said, looking into Charles eyes. “We might be willing to trade services.”

  “Um, well, I’ll see what I can do,” Charles said. Penny thought he looked rather embarrassed at the whole thing.

  I wonder if Charles has ever been pursued by a woman before, Penny thought. Or if he’s always been the instigator.

  “Follow me this way,” Lorelei said, waving her hand. She led Penny and the siblings down a path of sparkling rock that had been carved out of the rock face. No one said another word the rest of the way down. Penny was sure that it was equal parts sorrow at the loss of Mr. Wolf and amazement at the beautiful Nixen homeworld. The gates to the city were made of thick, black obsidian carved into delicate curls. Penny wasn’t sure how the merpeople were able to perform such craftsmanship.

  The city was surrounded by a deep moat of pure blue water. Penny didn’t see any type of bridge for people with legs to cross over the moat, but she guessed that not many humans passed through the gates. Two merman guarded the gate with Poseidon like tridents.

  “Eine Minute,” Lorelei said, telling them to wait. “Oh and boys, plug your ears.” The group stopped at the edge of the water, while Lorelei sang. Charles and Thomas both looked like idiots while they hummed and yelled with their fingers in their ears. To Penny, Lorelei’s song sounded like nothing more than the voice of a well-trained opera singer, but she knew that to the boys, Lorelei’s song would basically make them zombies.

  A narrow bridge in matching obsidian rose from the water.

  “Lorelei, does your song only affect men?” Penny asked as she playful slapped Thomas.

  “No,” Lorelei said as she stepped on to the bridge. “I can sing a different song that will affect women too. But it is hard for me to sing.”

  “Can we unplug our ears yet?” Thomas yelled.

  “Yes,” Lorelei said.

  “What?” Thomas said, still shouting. He smiled as Penny poked him the arm pit. Thomas jerked his fingers away from his ears to protect his ticklish spot.

  Penny shook her head. “You are the worst vampire that I have ever met,” she said, poking him in the stomach.

  “I agree,” Lorelei said, raising an eyebrow. “I didn’t even know vampires were ticklish.”

  “They aren’t,” Charli said. “Just Thomas.”

  “You know Charles is more vampiry than you are,” Lorelei said stepping off the bridge and leaning into Charles again. “Serious, charming, handsome, mysterious…”

  “Gee, thanks,” Thomas said.

  “I don’t know if that was too much of a compliment for me either,” Charles said, scrunching his nose up.

  “Oh come on where’s your sense of humor?” Penny asked Charles. “Oh wait, your big brother must have stolen it.” Penny laughed as she stepped onto the bridge. The rock was pretty slick, so she was careful as she walked across. She slipped slightly on a slicker spot, but regained her balance.

  “Careful Penny,” Thomas shouted after her. He stepped on the bridge and followed. “The moat is filled with a caustic substance that will cause your skin to melt off.”

  “What?” Penny said, freezing halfway through the bridge.

  “No,” Lorelei said, shaking her head. “It’s just regular water. I figured you guys wouldn’t want to get wet again so I raised a bridge.”

  Penny rolled her eyes and turned around to face Thomas.

  “What?” Thomas said with a smirk. “I just have an over active imagination.”

  Penny feigned turning back around, but instead whipped around and pushed Thomas into the water. “Enjoy your caustic sludge,” she said and then finished her walk across the bridge.

  Thomas resurfaced quickly and swam to the other side of the moat. The rest of the three crossed the bridge and then it sank beneath the water again.

  The two Mermen looked at the group warily.

  “Guten Nacht,” Thomas said greeting the guards. They did not respond.

  Lorelei pushed her way to the front of the group and greeted the guards. “I’m with the Wolf Clan. This is Charles Wolf,” Lorelei said as she pointed to Charles. “We were attacked by the Brotherhood. Their father was killed in the attack.”

  Penny felt a lump in her throat the mention of Mr. Wolf’s death. Being under attack and fleeing the scene of the crime hadn’t left anyone much time for proper grieving. Penny looked over at Thomas. The smile was gone from his face and he was trying to hide his pain by not looking at anyone. Charles on the other hand had the same emotionless expression his face always held, but Penny knew him well enough to know that there was deep pain inside. Charli, was a little bit more of a mystery for Penny. All that she saw on Charli’s face was anger. Penny knew enough that she did not want to be on the receiving end Charli’s anger.

  The Brotherhood had created a monster of a family bent of revenge when they killed Mr. Wolf and kidnapped Penny’s family.

  “We just want brief asylum to regroup,” Charles said, stepping out from the group. “Plus, I have agreed to lend a hand with your…breeding program?”

  Penny tried not to giggle, but Thomas and Charli weren’t quite as polite.

  The guards didn’t seem to care much about the giggling vampires, but seemed genuinely impressed that Lorelei had brought them Charles Wolf.

  “You may pass,” The larger guard said to the group. “But please do not linger long here. Vampires make our people a little uneasy.”

  Lorelei led the group through the narrow stone streets. On every rock or outcropping, sat a mermaid. Mermaids by themselves wouldn’t have been so bad, but these mermaids were completely nude. There silky breasts lay on their bodies for the whole world to see. Penny looked over to Thomas. His eyes were glued to the floor.

  “Boobies still bother you, brother?” Charli poked Thomas in the side. “I thought you would have gotten over that with Penny.” Charli winked at Thomas, but he still kept his eyes on the ground.

  “Nope,” Thomas said, briefly looking up at Penny. “Penny is all the woman that I can handle.” He smiled when he looked at Penny.

  Penny heart skipped a beat. Even though she and Thomas had been together for a couple of months, he still made her weak in the knees like the first time they had kissed. Penny met Thomas’s eyes before he looked down at the ground again.

  Charles was not so inhibited with his wandering eye. He didn’t gawk at
the nude mermaids, but he didn’t avoid looking at them either. While the guys were busy looking at or avoiding looking at the mass of Mermaids, Penny’s eyes followed the interesting lines of the architecture.

  Most of the buildings were made out of coral. Water features were prominent on the front of every building. Many of the streets were water canals and the crew of land dwellers skirted the canals on thin sidewalks attached to the coral buildings.

  Many of the doorways were covered with nothing more than a veneer of seaweed. Several doors were covered in strings of small shells. Only a couple of doorways had actual doors. None of the buildings had a symmetry like buildings above ground. Some of them were more round and others had a couple angles that didn’t match each other. Most buildings were several stories high and had coral spires reaching into the Nixen sky.

  “Wow, Lorelei,” Penny said, “this place is incredibly beautiful.”

  “Thank you,” Lorelei replied. She walked up to a large building surrounded by another moat. Another merman stood sentry outside of the door.

  “Madame,” the sentry said, nodding in Lorelei’s direction.

  “You live here?” Charles said, looking up at the large, sprawling building.

  “It’s my daddy’s,” Lorelei said, tossing her light brown hair behind her.

  “Daddy?” Thomas asked as he followed Lorelei through the gates of the mansion.

  “Yeah, um, Poseidon,” Lorelei said, looking at the ground.

  “Great,” Charles said, rolling his eyes.

  “Wait, what? Poseidon is real?” Penny asked. She was used to weird things happening lately, but a Greek god being real was way beyond her comprehension. And very cool. Penny had always loved Greek mythology when she was younger. She had read all of the myths and seen every movie about them. She was always more fascinated with Greek mythology than she was with vampire mythology despite being stuck in a bad vampire movie herself. “Can I meet him?”

  “Whoa, hold on there, Penny,” Thomas said. He put his arm around her shoulder.

  “So Lorelei, not to question your motives here, but you mentioned that your sister was being held captive?” Charles said, giving her his patent evil look.

  “She is,” Lorelei said, stepping back out of the door. “Sort of…I think you might say she is being grounded.” Lorelei tried to smile sweetly.

  Penny had to laugh. Charles gave her another stern look, but Penny couldn’t help it. Suddenly Penny felt like she had moved from Dracula to a Disney mermaid movie.

  Thomas chuckled. “How about we go in and talk about it,” Thomas said.

  Lorelei invited the group into her home. Penny entered last and just stood in the door amazed at the décor in the room. In the center was a large pool of water with a spring in the middle. The pool, like the rest of the buildings, didn’t have a regular symmetry, but it was still the most beautiful water feature that Penny had ever seen. The floor of the pool looked like it had been laid with emeralds and sapphires. Large chandeliers made of crystal geodes hung from the ceiling, just glancing over the mirror like water.

  “Wow, so this is how Poseidon lives,” Penny said as she took a few more steps inside the house.

  “Papa won’t be here,” Lorelei said as she waded into the pool. A fish tale replaced her legs again. “But Papa isn’t really called Poseidon, that just a Greek mispronunciation of his title.”

  “Oh, well, whatever,” Penny said, sitting on scaly chair on the outskirts of the pool. The rest of the group either found chairs or joined Lorelei in the pool. “It’s still awesome.”

  “Wait, I thought that you said your kind don’t ya know…have kids,” Charles said as a light bulb went off in his head. “So how is he your dad?”

  “They still have family structures,” Thomas said, throwing a bit of seaweed at Charles. Thomas always liked to throw the fact that he was smarter in Charles’s face. Penny thought that it might help make up for the fact that Charles was a more natural fighter.

  “Yes, my parents are married. So any children that my mother has with a human man, belong to my father as well,” Lorelei explained. She sounded like this odd arrangement was no big deal. But Penny thought it was just plain weird. Things like this just didn’t happen with humans.

  Penny wrinkled her nose in disgust. Thomas caught her making the face and gave her a look that meant, “Don’t judge.”

  “You know that isn’t much different than surrogates, or artificial insemination that humans use,” Thomas said, dipping a bare toe in the pool.

  “Oh, humans have the ability too?” Lorelei asked.

  “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.

  (CHAPTER 4) Charles’s Decision

  “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, they 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.