Always Darkest (8 page)

Realization dawned on Tori, “You mean
Victoria
’s Secret Angel?
 
Oh my god!”
Willa was still snickering at her own little joke and the laughter was infections.
 
Tori began to laugh so hard she couldn’t stand herself.
 
Mason and Justin looked back at them and they were still both laughing.
 

“What is so funny?” Justin asked.

Mason just looked back at them and grinned.

“It’s a lady joke.” Willa said still laughing.

Justin and Mason shared a look and shook their heads.

They walked back into the castle the same way they came in earlier that night.
 
The ballroom looked quite different with people lying on the floor in various states of drunken slumber.
 
She knew they were going to feel like crap tomorrow.
 
She had definitely been there and done that enough to know two glasses of wine will make you feel fine three or more will leave you sick and sore.
  
Mason led them down several quiet hallways that were lit with only torches.
 
Finally down a large stairway that seemed to go on forever.
 
At the bottom of the stairs, he stopped and motioned for Tori to go straight down the hallway.
 
He, Justin and Willa took a passageway to the left.
 
Tori thought he knew this dungeon well enough. Perhaps he had spent some time in the king’s dungeon himself.

She walked toward the light and saw the two guards sitting on chairs around a small square table playing a card game just as Mason said they would be.
 
There swords propped against the wall to either side of them.
 
They were both dressed in formal guard uniforms.
 
When they came into site she began to stumble and feel along the wall for support.
 
They didn’t even notice her till she was right upon them.

“Ma’am you can’t be down here!” said the guard with the curly brown hair.

“I am so sorry.
 
I, I think I had too much to drink, it is my first time at the castle and I think I have gotten myself lost.
 
Could you help me find my way back upstairs and out of the castle?
 
This is like a maze or something.”
 
She said trying her best to believably slur her words enough to make her seem drunk, but not enough to make her seem disgusting.
 
Seducing was hard work.

The other guard, the one with the shaved head spoke up. “We can’t leave our posts ma’am.
 
You see we are the prison guards and we have to protect nice ladies like you from the scourge of society.
 
There are a lot of dangerous criminals behind bars down that hallway.”
 
He said gesturing to the hallway behind him.
 
Tori noticed him eyeing her chest.
 
Men!
 
Then the two guards shared a look.

Curly haired guard spoke up again.
 
“Of course, if you want to stay down here and entertain us till the morning replacements come in we’d be happy to show you out then.
 
It can get awfully lonely down here all night.”
 
He was closing in on her.
 
Where the hell was Mason?

She began to back away towards the door through which she had come.
 
“I think I better give it a try, my uh, my husband will be worried if I don’t get home soon.”

“Not so fast,” the bald guard said grabbing her arm, “there are penalties for wandering into the dungeon.
 
We are going to have some fun with you.”

She struggled against them as they wrestled her to the floor.
 
She screamed as the curly haired guard started ripping the strings loose from her beautiful corseted top.

“Scream all you want, no one is going to hear you down here.”

That was the last words big baldy got to speak that night as Mason came up behind him and hit him upside the head with the his fists.

“What the….” Curly exclaimed as Justin hit him with the hilt of his sword.

Tori scrambled to her feet as Mason and Justin tied and gagged each guard.
 
“Did you really have to wait to the last minute?”
 
She said as she tried once again to tuck her assets into her corset.

“Sorry,” Mason began, “we had to wait until they were fully distracted.
 
Did they hurt you?”

“No.”

“Turn around let me lace you back up.”
 
His agile fingers quickly worked the strings and she once again felt secure in her costume.

Once the guards were secured, Justin popped up.
 
“I got the keys.”
 

“Good.”
 
Mason said.
 
“Granny, do you have the note?”

“It’s already on the table next to the empty wine bottle.”

“Well done my friends, now let’s go set free the wayward tinker Thomas.”

Chapter Eleven

Once the guards were taken care of Mason led everyone to the cell where Thomas was being kept.
 
Thomas was on his knees with his hands folded on his cot.
 
He was praying.
 
“
Please get me out of here.
 
Please let me see my wife and son one more time
.”

Mason cut off his prayer.
 
“Thomas it is time to go.”

The old man looked up and saw Mason and then Tori in her angel costume.
 
He grabbed his chest for a moment.
 
“You have got to be shitting me.”
 
The old man said half laughing.
 
“I was just…and then you…and she….”

Mason deftly used the keys they had gotten from the guards to unlock his cell.
 
“Come with us, we need to get out of the castle as soon as possible.”

.
 
Thomas was a man of about seventy, with close trimmed grey hair, hazel eyes and he still spoke with the heir of a military man.
 
He wore brown pants, a black shirt and a military vest.
 
He didn’t waste any time in getting up and following them through the maze of the dungeon and out of the castle.
 
They hurried to the awaiting carriage and back to Mason’s home.

Mason led everyone into his kitchen and everyone sat around the table.

“Excuse my manors, but prison food is horrible and I am starving.”
 
Thomas said.
 
“Do you have anything to eat?”

“I understand. No offense taken.”
 
Mason said as he got up and brought some wine, bread, cheese and cookies to the table.

“So why exactly did you bust me out of jail?”
 
Thomas asked as he reached for a cookie.

“Why exactly were you in jail?” Mason countered.

“Oh, it’s a bunch of shit,” said the old man.

“I’ll start then.”
 
Mason said. “Well you see, my fiends here Tori and Justin seem to have come from the trash world.
 
It has been rumored that you came from there too and we were hoping you could find a way to get them home.
 
You seem to be the trash world specialist.”

Tori could tell Mason was ever so subtly appealing to the man’s ego.
 
“Well that I am and that is precisely why I am in jail.
 
You see, I came over almost fifty years ago when the government tested a bomb out in the desert.
 
I was a private back then and was sitting on the ground behind my jeep eating a sandwich when the test commenced.
 
Next thing I knew I was sitting in the middle of the desert, but there was nothing but rocks and hard earth as far as I could see.
 
The land was similar but no jeep, no one and no military vehicles of any kind.
 
The earth was still shaking and for a moment and I thought that maybe I had just been thrown by a blast.
 
The ground continued to shake and then I realized it was an earthquake.
  
When the ground stopped shaking I began to walk.
 
Eventually I came upon a town.
 
Red Rock was the name and after making a fool of myself with enough folks it dawned on me that I wasn’t on Earth anymore, I had initially convinced myself that the three suns was just a trick of my eyes. Then other things began to show up from Earth.
 
It seems the bomb testing had ripped a tear, or opened up something between out two worlds.
 
I lived in Red Rock for twenty years, looking for a way back home.
 
I had a wife and a baby back on Earth and I was going to be damned if I didn’t try everything in my power to get home.
 
Obviously nothing worked.
 
Do you have anymore bread?
 
And maybe some more wine if you please?”

Mason got up and retuned with more food.
 
After he had had a little more Thomas continued.
 
“Thank you.
 
Anyway, I studied the newspapers that would sometimes come over and I realized a correlation.
 
Any kind of traumatic event like for instance when the bombs were dropped in World War II triggers a natural weather event here, like an earthquake or storm.
 
And vice versa, then when all that magic was being thrown around in the war a few years ago here, it gave the earth all kinds of natural disasters.
 
The two worlds are connected.
  
It seems the energy transfer goes both ways, but the matter is a one way door.
 
Damn, my son would be almost fifty now. I’d give anything to see him just one more time and know that he is okay.
 
I wonder if my wife, my
Pearl
, is still….”
 
He trailed off
and
 
Tori
could see the sadness showing through the wetness building up in the eyes of the old man.
 
She placed her hand on the old man’s hand.

“You are so sweet dear.”
 
Thomas used the back his other hand to wipe the tears from his eyes.
 
“I got in a little trouble in Red Rock when one of my attempts to get home went awry.
 
Then I came here to Nathis.
 
The king soon saw my use as I could replicate a lot of the things from earth and make others work.
 
It was just luck as I
founds
a few packs of batteries lying on the ground back in Red Rock.
 
People were amazed by a damn flashlight.”
 
He laughed a little hysterically. “I have been in his employment ever since.
 
That is how I got to be known as Thomas the tinker.
 
Really I was just Thomas the hungry solider who had been given guard duty for a bomb test.
 
The reason I was in jail was I finally found a way back.
 
I told the king thinking he would be happy for me as we had grown close over the years and I have talked to him about my
Pearl
many times.
 
He asked me to stay and I refused.
 
So I was thrown in for insubordination.
 
The king no doubt thought a few months among the rats would improve my attitude and productivity considerably. He is going to be mad as hell when he discovers that I escaped.”
 
The old man laughed heartily.
 
“Speaking of, the king and my escape, we need to get the hell out of here or we are all going to be keeping each other company in the dungeons tomorrow.”

“Well, the guards are probably going to be inmates as well in the morning.”
 
Mason said.

Willa looked at Thomas, “you may not be as old as me, son, and I’m tired.
 
How exactly can you travel between the worlds?”

Thomas smiled.
 
“We need only two things, a wizard and a gun.”

Chapter Twelve

“You need a wizard and a gun?”
 
Mason asked looking a little bemused.
 
“It can’t be that simple.”

“It is.
 
I wish I had figured it out years ago.
 
I should have figured it out years ago.”
 
Thomas said shaking his head.
 
“It is really very simple.
 
The wizard needs only to cast the circle.
 
Then a gun must be fired into the ground, causing a disturbance as well as blending the magic of Three Suns with the ‘magic’ of Earth.
 
This will cause a mini tear that will last only a few seconds.
 
Whatever is within the circle when the gun is fired will be transported back to Earth.”

“Have you tested this theory?”
 
Justin asked.

“If I had, I wouldn’t be here now, would I?” Thomas said harshly.

“Sorry,” Justin said.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to snap at you.
 
It will work.
 
I am sure of it.”