Aphrodisia Ch. 05

The journey passed quickly and he soon found himself on a road between two fields similar to the one that he'd been on earlier that day. Finding a place to park his car did not take long and he was soon looking over the map again.

"Ok I'm here, now what do I do? Dig?" He thought aloud to himself after locating the spot over which the X indicated. There was nothing beneath his feet but dirt.

When he looked at the map again he saw that a picture of Allison had suddenly emerged in the corner. She was there in all her beauty as an illustration sitting on the border, smiling up at him.

"Um, you're not helping much here Allison." Jamie spoke to the unmoving little figure on the map. He still didn't have a clue what he was supposed to do after all.

Just as he was about to go grab his shovel from his pack he saw a line emerging from Allison's lips on the map. The line traced out the shape of a speech bubble over the paper and all the lines within the bubble vanished to be replaced by the words: STEP FORWARD.

Jamie took a step forward.

The words in the bubble vanished and then were replaced by: STAMP FOOT THREE TIMES.

Jamie hesitated and then, feeling a little silly, he stamped his foot three times.

The instant his boot hit the ground for the third time Jamie felt the earth beneath him crumble and he plunged down into the darkness below. He let out a yell of surprise as he tried to grab at thin air but found that the fall wasn't a large one as he soon found his backside connecting with the hard concrete floor beneath.

"Fuck!" He said between gritted teeth. Yet he realised after a moment that he wasn't hurt despite landing on his ass like that.

Getting to his feet, he looked around the room he'd fallen into. His eyes adjusted to the lack of light and he saw that he'd dropped down into some kind of cellar. There must have been a house above the field at one point since he saw some stairs leading up to a wood covered ceiling where the first floor should have been.

"Jamie, are you alright!?" A concerned feminine voice called from above.

Looking up to the hole he'd fallen through, Jamie saw Elisha's face looking down at him. The wooden floor in that area of the roof had grown rotten over the years and someone must have just boarded it over and covered the boards with dirt to hide that they were there.

"Bloody death trap." Jamie muttered to himself.

"What?" Elisha called when she heard him below.

"Oh, yeah I'm fine Elisha." Jamie said absently before realising something was amiss. "Hey what the hell are you doing here?"

"I uh...I hid in the back of your car! I wanted to see what all the secrecy was about." She called down. "Is there a way out down there?"

Jamie looked around for a moment and saw there wasn't a great deal of things to climb upon. The only items in the cellar were a few cupboards that looked so rotten that he wasn't even going to try to stand on them. The roof was not that far above him however, only a few feet above his head. In fact the only reason Elisha couldn't see him was that he'd stepped out of the light when he'd stood up.

When he did step back into the light however she immediately looked relieved when she saw his face. She'd obviously thought that the hole was much deeper than it was.

"I think I can just jump up to climb out." Jamie said. Then he jumped up and caught the edge of the hole. His fingers dug into the dirt above and he pulled himself up. The wood beneath held his weight easily when he wasn't trying to stamp his way through it.

"Alright get out of there then, lord knows what could be down there." Elisha said.

Jamie let go of the side and plunged back down to the floor. He had to find whatever Allison had sent him here for.

"Hey! What the hell are ya doing?" Elsha's voice went up a few more octaves once again.

"It's fine Elisha. You can come down if you like. There's four big stone pillars holding up the ceiling." Jamie explained as he looked around again.

"Well they weren't big enough to hold you up were they? C'mon Jamie you shouldn't be looking through holes in the...wait a second what the hell are stone pillars doin' down there in the first place?" She asked, curiosity getting the better of her.

"It's some kind of old cellar. I bet whatever farmer owns the field just boarded over it because they couldn't afford to get rid of it properly." Jamie replied, now looking around once more. "There's a torch in the back of my car. Can you run and get it for me?"

"Alright but don't go wandering off!" Elisha said and he saw her head disappear from over the hole.

"Ha bloody ha." Jamie grumbled to himself.

He found that when he stepped into the dark and his eyes adjusted he could see incredibly well without a torch. Probably another enhancement of his body Allison had given him after she accidentally frazzled him. Looking over the place he saw the large stones that made up the walls and the simple patterns that decorated the stone pillars. Still, there didn't seem to be much down here besides rotten furniture.

"Here!" Elisha said and Jamie turned back to see a torch dangling from the hole in the ceiling.

Jamie took the torch and turned it on.

"Can I come down?" The girl asked after a little while.

Jamie's first instinct had been to say 'no' but he caught himself and checked the roof again with the torch. The boards were old and had indeed started to rot in places but the danger of the roof completely caving in on them was practically nonexistent.

"You sure you want to? It's a little creepy down here." Jamie asked.

"I live for creepy!" Elisha said.

"Alright then but be careful." Jamie replied.

A few moments later he saw her legs descend into the hole followed shortly by her bottom. The girl was wearing some old trainers along with thick black stockings and a short blue skirt. A loose grey sweater hung about her upper arms and beneath it he saw the straps of a slinky black tank top. Jamie couldn't help but admire her firm bottom as it wiggled about when she lowered the rest of herself down by her arms. Reaching up he grasped her sides and helped her down to stand on the concrete floor beneath them.

"Bloody hell Jamie where did those muscle's come from?" She asked when he put her down. Although she wasn't heavy by any stretch of the imagination it seemed that he'd lifted her as if she were completely weightless.

"Oh, I've been ah, working out." He said somewhat evasively.

"Bollocks, I've never seen you go to a gym since I've known you." She said as he handed her the torch.

"Yeah well I mostly do press ups, sit ups...you now stuff I can do on my own." He said before walking over to one of the walls and looking at it as if he thought it should sprout wings at any moment.

"Oh so that's what those noises are I sometimes hear coming from your room at three in the morning?" She teased and sent the beam of the flashlight to the wall where he was looking.

"No that's just me having a quick wank." He replied. In truth the only time Jamie saw three in the morning was when he was desperately trying to improve his course papers before they had to be handed in the same day.

"Well yeh've got to get the tension out somehow right? I sit on the washing machine myself. S'why I'm always so eager to do your laundry for you." She said with a little smirk.

"I thought you had Louis for that?" Jamie said almost absently. His attention had been drawn to a particular stone with a strange marking on it.

"Oh, that, well Louis an' I didn't really work out. We decided that living together wasn't a good way to start out a relationship yeh know?" She said. Her tone was a little more sombre now.

Jamie turned away from the marking to look at her with a concerned expression. Though he forgot that she basically had the torch pointed at him and he almost blinded himself.

"Sorry! My fault." Elisha apologised and pointed the light away from his head.

"It's alright. I thought you and Louis got on like a house on fire? In fact I seem to remember you almost literally setting the house on fire when you got freaky whilst there were scented candles in the room." He'd not been around for that particular adventure thankfully but Rob, his other flatmate had told him through bouts of hysterical laughter.

"Ha. Well we decided it would just be best if we were friends." Elisha replied a little self consciously.

"Alright." Jamie said before changing the subject to try to make her stop feeling so awkward. "How the hell did you get into the back of my car anyway?"

"The back door of your car doesn't lock. I thought you knew?" She asked as if his lack of sufficient car security was one of the basic elements of life.

"No, how long has it not locked?" Jamie said, understandably disturbed at this news.

"Since I've known you." She replied.

"Well it's nice to know that apparently I can get rid of the trouble to break into my car and still no one thinks it's nice enough to try to steal." Shaking his head he looked back to the stone.

"You found something there? How in the lord's name did you find this place anyway?" She said as she pointed the torch at the marking on the stone.

"Just came across a map whilst going through some old diaries in the..." Jamie said as he reached out to touch the symbol. Yet as his fingers came into contact with it the stone receded into the wall and a deep rumble of rock grinding against rock could be heard behind it. "...hell is that?"

"Jamie stepped back a little and the stones around the symbol slowly started to move. They swung back on some kind of hidden hinge to form a doorway into yet another darkened secret chamber. The stale air of the place rushed out to greet Jamie as Elisha stepped up beside him.

"What d'yeh suppose this is?" She asked.

"Hell if I know." Jamie replied honestly.

Yet he couldn't deny there was a certain foreboding presence in the room to be sure. His eyes once again adjusted to the deeper darkness and saw through it to look over the hidden chamber. What he saw made him turn a slight shade paler.

"Wait Elisha don't..." He started to say as she moved the light of the torch to what he had seen.

The scream that came from her lungs was deafening in the enclosed cellar. She immediately dropped the torch and Jamie felt her arms wrapping around him a moment later.

"Whoa there, it's alright, it's alright." Jamie said in a soothing tone as he felt her starting to shake against him. Wrapping his arms around her to comfort her he gave the girl a reassuring squeeze. "It can't hurt you."

"I know it just scared the living fuck outta me." She said, her voice a little shaky.

"Me too." Said Jamie and if he was honest it had yet he didn't seem to register fear as he once did.

The reason for Elisha's outburst was the dead body resting on some kind of odd looking altar in the middle of the dark chamber. It must have been there for years yet its flesh hadn't fully rotted away yet. It looked something like the mummified corpses of ancient Egyptians that museums are so eager to freak people out with. Jamie looked at it with mixed apprehension and curiosity.

"Look if you want to go back outside then I'll help you up but I need to check this out." Jamie said as his hand gently stroked her back.

"No, no I'm fine. It just startled me. I'm good." She said as if trying to convince herself more than him. Finally setting a determined smile on her lips and giving him a nod.

"Alright but if you decide you want to get out of here then just ask." He said as she slowly let him go to pick the torch back up.

"Will do boss." She said with a little nod.

Jamie stepped forward into the darkness of the room and looked around the place. The body on the stone table in the centre wasn't the only curiosity in the room to be certain. Stuck in its chest was a dagger of exquisite design. The cobwebs and dust that had fallen upon it over the years hadn't managed to fully dull the glimmering steel blade and jewel encrusted hilt.

"Do you think you should be doing that?" Elisha asked as Jamie reached out for the blade and started to brush away the cobwebs.

"I don't think he'll mind, do you?" Jamie said.

"I just mean..." She trailed off then since she didn't really know what she meant.

Jamie looked down more closely at the body and gave a slightly weary look at the chains that bound its wrists to the table. He hadn't noticed those before.

"It looks like some kind of ritual sacrifice." He observed. "An unwilling one by the looks of it."

"What d'yeh think that's all about?" Jamie heard Elisha say as the light from the torch moved to the far wall.

Jamie had noticed it already but didn't think it seemed all that interesting compared to the dead body in the room. Yet it was weird to be sure. The light from the torch showed the wall to be made from brick rather than the large stone slabs that made up the rest of the place. What's more the bricks weren't formed in the way that bricks usually were. Instead they lay side by side, stacked perfectly with their ends making up the surface of the wall. Jamie walked over to it and took a closer look. They were grey in colour and each had a strange mark on them.

"That's the mark of a Roman Legion." Allison's words echoed in his head as he remembered what she'd said whilst looking at the brick in Sonya's bag.

As he looked over the wall he saw that the bricks weren't connected to the wall at either side or on the roof, nor were they connected to each other by any kind of cement or mortar. Reaching up he slid his fingers into the thin gap between the roof and the wall and pulled one of the bricks free. When he did however, he underestimated just how heavy the thing was and dropped it from the infirm grasp his fingertips had on it. The brick smashed onto the ground by his foot with a strange metallic clang instead of shattering as he thought it would.

"Bricks don't usually do that right?" Elisha had now entered the room. Her curiosity finally outweighed her fear of the corpse.

"I'm pretty sure they don't." Jamie said as he reached down to pick it up.

When he'd lifted up Elisha shone the light of the torch upon it and her eyes widened in shock. The impact of the landing had scraped away the surface of the brick and beneath it glimmered with a shiny yellow colour.

"Is that what I think it is?" She asked, her voice barely above a whisper.

"I think so." Jamie said in a matching tone as he watched the glinting of the metal.

It was gold. It had been painted grey to look like a stone wall of bricks then hidden in a secret chamber with this dead body for years.

"Are they all...?" Elisha left the question hanging as Jamie reached for another brick and then another to scratch away the paint and reveal the precious metal beneath it.

"Y-yeah." Jamie finally said.

"Jamie, you're rich!" She exclaimed and promptly threw herself at him to give a congratulatory hug.

Jamie started to laugh in excitement as his free arm wrapped around her.

"I'm rich!" He said before dropping the gold bar and picking her up, twirling her around in the air whilst they both cheered.

After Jamie had set her back down on her feet Elisha looked over the vast treasure and pointed the torch down the narrow gap between the bricks and the outer wall.

"Oh my god Jamie I can't even see the end at the other side. The bricks must be stacked at least twenty feet into this wall. How do you suppose you're gonna get all this back to..." Yet she trailed off as she looked over to Jamie. It seemed he'd noticed something on the other side of the altar and was looking at it with avid interest.

There was a small glass vial stood on an outcropping of the altar.

With a slight apprehension he stepped over towards it and picked it up.

"What's that?" Elisha asked as she pointed the torch at the little glass vial. The light made the glass glimmer with light and it seemed that it might have actually been made from crystal rather than glass.

"I found something a lot like it up in York." Jamie told her. Though he neglected to mention that when he'd opened it a goddess had come out.

"It's a pretty little thing isn't it?" She said regarding the intricate little patterns decorating its surface.

"Yeah it is." Jamie said. Then he closed his eyes and pointed the opening of the vial away from him before slowly removing the stopper as if it might explode.

Nothing happened.

"What the hell are yeh up to?" Elisha asked when she saw him handling the vial like it was full of nitro-glycerine.

Jamie looked a little puzzled to be sure and peered inside the little bottle.

"Yup, definitely no god in there." He thought to himself feeling somewhat sheepish.

"Just thought I saw a spider in there. Hate spiders." He answered lamely.

Elisha raised a brow at that.

"You know for the richest guy I've ever met you're a little weird Jamie." She said and then smirked at him afterward.

"Weird might as well be my middle name lately." He replied as he pocketed the vial.

"Look I dunno if you're interested but I can borrow a truck if you want to get this lot out of here." She suggested.

"Who do you know with a truck?" Jamie asked.

"A friend of mine has one. He loans it out to students when they move out of the dorms and into housing." She explained.

"Sure alright then." Jamie said after a moment's consideration.

"Partners then?" She asked.

"Partners." Jamie agreed.

"Split the take fifty-fifty?" She said whilst wiggling her eyebrows.

"You wish." Jamie flashed a grin her way.

"Hey yeh can't blame a girl for tryin'. You think we should take the knife too and bury this poor guy?" She asked, though she still found it hard to look upon the 'poor guy' without a chill going down her spine.

"Yeah I guess we should, shouldn't we?" Jamie said as he stepped forward and wrapped his hand around the hilt of the knife before pulling it up out of the body.

As the very tip of the still razor edged weapon was released from the corpse Jamie felt a wave of heat emanate from the withered remains. He just managed to catch a glimpse of the blinding white light within the recesses of that skull before the body was vaporised right before his eyes. That light he'd seen seemed to burn brighter and brighter right before him and sent a thunderous blast of energy from deep within it that sent Jamie flying through the air to hit the wall behind him. When he next opened his eyes the light had vanished and where the corpse had once been there was nothing but the empty stone altar.

When he regained his wits he realised that although he'd hit his head quite hard against the stone wall he once again felt no pain and found he wasn't injured in the slightest. Then suddenly realising he wasn't the only one in the room his eyes darted over to where Elisha had been stood by the wall of hidden gold. He saw her lying on the ground, breathing but otherwise stunned by whatever had happened to the dead body.

Immediately he rushed across the room to her and found himself stumbling as he stood up. It wasn't until he noticed the full length of his sizable erection piping along beneath his jeans that he realised just how aroused he was. Whether it was the hit to the head or the concern for Elisha he didn't know but now a wave of pure lust coursed along his body. His straining cock became painful as it endeavoured to tear his jeans open and be let free.

What the hell had happened? He could usually control his climaxes and his arousal with ease but something inside that flash of light had connected with him. Its power churned inside him and seemed to blow out all his circuits leaving him only with an unquenchable need for sex.

"Jamie?" Elisha's voice, a pleasant distraction from his current circumstances. "Oh god what happened?"