Shooting Eros - The Emuna Chronicles: Complete Boxset: Books 1 - 3

by Benjamin Laskin

  Ellen frowned. “You see, I was afraid—”

  “No, no, it’s just that I think we need to sit down and talk at length about your ideas, and here isn’t the place.”

  “So you’ll hear what I have in mind?”

  “If I didn’t, I’d be guilty of the same midget-minded orthodoxy I accused my own professors of when I was a grad student.”

  “Thank you,” Ellen said effusively.

  “Now enough shop talk,” Matterson said. “Would you like to dance?”

  “I’d love to.”

  Chauncey Matterson took Ellen by the hand and led her to the dance floor.

  Captain Cyrus watched them walk off.

  I said, “Isn’t that—?”

  “My next match, yes,” Cyrus answered.

  “Some coincidence them being here today,” I said.

  “There are no coincidences,” Volk said.

  “You’ve got a clear target, Captain Cyrus. What are you waiting for?”

  “Further observation,” the captain replied coolly. “Something’s not kosher.”

  “But Eros never makes a mistake,” I said, not understanding the captain’s hesitancy.

  Cyrus and Volk exchanged meaningful glances, but they said nothing.

  Then Cyrus said, “Eros doesn’t make matches, despite what you have been told.”

  “He doesn’t?”

  “All matches come from an Academy algorithm.”

  “A computer?”

  Cyrus nodded. “The match is handed to the judges, given a short debate, and then passed on to cupids to carry out.”

  “Really? Who created the algorithm? Eros?”

  “A team of know-nothing Academy psychologists,” Volk said. “Bureaucrats.”

  “Wow,” I remarked. “What a disappointment…”

  Volk grinned. “Get used to it, Kohai. You ain’t heard nothin’ yet.”

  The music stopped and applause erupted. Carried away in the moment, I clapped along with everyone else for the couple of the hour. My applause, of course, was inaudible to the humans. The captains did nothing but remain vigilant.

  The bride and groom took a grand bow, waved to their guests, and kissed each other, earning them another ovation.

  The band’s leader and vocalist cut in, saying, “We are Boomerang, and we’ll be back in twenty to rock you for another hour. Eat, drink, and stay merry!”

  Ellen and Chauncey clapped along with the rest. As the applause subsided, Chauncey leaned in and said to her, “I suppose now might be a good time. Would you be interested in going somewhere quiet to have that talk?”

  Ellen smiled. “I don’t think we’ll be missed.”

  “Great. I just have to make a quick phone call. I’m supposed to meet Professor Tariq later, but I’m going to postpone it for another day.” He pulled out his cell phone and dialed. “Strange. We seem to be in a blind spot.” He moved closer to the window, but he still couldn’t get a signal. He shrugged and returned to Ellen’s side. “I just changed carriers too. Oh well, excuse me a minute. I’ll be right back.”

  “No hurry.” She pointed to the wedding cake. “It’s a big cake.”

  He walked off and Ellen returned to the cake table. She stood a couple of feet from us, and we watched her cut a slice of cake and eat it as she surveyed the party, oblivious to our observations.

  Chauncey glanced back at Ellen. She smiled at him and coquettishly licked the icing from her fork. Matterson’s eyes widened and he hurried out the door. It closed behind him and, eerily, locked itself.

  “Kohai,” Captain Cyrus snapped, alert and suspicious. “Reading.”

  I pulled out a miniature vibration-detecting device and scanned the room.

  “Detecting minimal interference, Sir.”

  Volk, having already picked up on Cyrus’s concern, withdrew a small, metallic, seven-branched tuning fork that resembled an ancient menorah, or candelabrum. Volk struck the table with it. It rang and vibrated. He looked at Cyrus and shook his head.

  “Check again, Kohai,” Cyrus ordered.

  I rechecked the device. “Demon-gauge 3.1415, Sir. Minimal yetzer interference. It’s a wedding party, after all. Home-court advantage.” I gestured towards the room. “A matchmaking piece of cake,” I added with a grin.

  Unimpressed by either my pun or my corps-issued demon detector, the captains scanned the room and its mingling guests. They sniffed at the air, but were otherwise very still.

  I followed suit and observed how the men and women were flirtatiously eyeing one another. My elevated sense of smell picked up on the high concentration of sweetly pungent pheromones in the room. Furthermore, even to my novice eyes, I had to admit the guests were becoming antsy.

  I checked out the uniformed, battle-ready cupid cadets, who, of course, were also invisible to the humans. The squadron of cupid cadets continued to hang back like wallflowers. They observed the party with deep interest, but did not seem to share the apprehension that Captains Cyrus and Volk were feeling.

  “Tricky bastards,” Volk said.

  “Huh?” I said. “Who?”

  Cyrus said, “No cake today, Kohai. Pi.”

  “Pie?”

  “3.1415. That is not a real number. It’s an irrational. Someone is jamming your little gizmo. The yetzers are awake, and they’re feeling cocky.”

  “How do you—? Sir, this demon-gauge is brand new. The latest model.”

  Volk snorted and offered a derisive gesture.

  I felt a buzz on my wrist and raised the communicator that was strapped to it. “It’s the Commander,” I said.

  I pushed a button and a hologram of Commander Sett’s face projected in miniature a few inches from the watch. We looked on.

  “All right men,” Sett said, addressing every cupid in the room. “You know your targets. Like shooting fish in a barrel.”

  Cyrus seized my wrist. “How do you work this gizmo?”

  I tapped a button.

  “Sett,” he said, urgency in his voice.

  “What is it, Captain?” the commander replied wearily.

  “It’s a trap. Retreat immediately!”

  “From a wedding? Are you nuts? On what intelligence?”

  “Intuitive.”

  “Yes, well, thank you, Captain. Your whimsy will be duly noted, and reported. Lock and load, soldiers. Time to make me proud. Over and out.” His face vanished.

  The squadron of cupid cadets withdrew harmonic crossbows from holsters strapped to their backs. They fixed them with potion-infused, gold-tipped arrows.

  I withdrew a pulsar passionator gun that I had hid under my jacket. It was about as lethal as a BB gun, but it was the only weapon I was allowed to check out of the Academy’s armory. Cyrus instantly snatched it from my hand.

  “No, Kohai.”

  “But, Sir—”

  “I said no buts, remember? You are under my command, and on my team no one goes goop.”

  “With all due respect, Sir,” I said. “It is a wedding party. Statistically, weddings are the easiest and safest places—”

  “Statistics will get you killed,” Volk snapped. “Shut up and do as you’re told.”

  “But, Sirs, if we don’t take part, we’ll be branded as cowards!”

  “Relax, Kohai,” Cyrus said. “The chronicles will record no heroes here today.”

  His eyes were on the bride. She had spotted her friend, Ellen Veetal. The bride waved and blew Ellen a kiss. Ellen smiled and blew back a kiss of her own. A man standing midway between the two women noticed the exchange. He reached up and playfully ‘intercepted’ Ellen’s kiss. He pretended to stick the kiss in his shirt pocket, and winked. Ellen chuckled and waved a ‘naughty-naughty’ finger at him. The man flashed a smarmy smile and began to make his way towards her.

  Just then I saw a passing blur. A cupid cadet had let loose one of his arrows. The arrow disappeared into the approaching man’s chest.

  As if absentmindedly, the man stopped in his tracks, turned, and then dir
ected his attention towards another woman who was eyeing him coyly over the rim of her champagne glass. Having forgotten all about Miss Veetal, the man headed over to the other, more flirtatious woman.

  “Hmm,” Ellen murmured. She contemplated the guests talking and flirting, seemingly well on their way to familiarity. “What is it about wedding parties?”

  The captains and I continued to observe the happenings around us with deep interest, and then my heart leaped into my throat. In a panic, I turned to Captain Cyrus, but he held up his hand, silencing me.

  “Quiet,” he commanded. “Don’t move.”

  11

  Party Animals

  Captain Cyrus withdrew a silk pouch from his jacket and sprinkled a glittering blue dust in a circle around us.

  “A lazurite circle?” I said.

  Cyrus nodded.

  Lazurite was the bright blue mineral that made up the gemstone lapis lazuli.

  “But I read that’s only used for—uh-oh…”

  Something was definitely wrong. All the eligible bachelors and bachelorettes in the room were losing interest in one another.

  Volk shouted, “Shallow Yetzer, three o’clock!”

  I turned and saw a man flirting with a woman. The lady dropped her napkin, and as she bent over to pick it up, the man took the opportunity to consider the size and shape of her bottom. Nothing too out of the normal about that, but to us, and to the potential beau, the woman’s rear throbbed and wobbled and tripled its true size. The scene might have been comical if it weren’t so realistic. Her wooer grimaced in revulsion and beat a hasty retreat. The woman stood back up, and to her dismay, saw that her suitor had vanished. She frowned, baffled.

  The woman had no way of knowing that the man was dominated by a Shallow Yetzer; a yetzer that magnified any physical imperfections the Shallow Yetzer-possessed person found ugly or gross.

  In this case, the man disliked big bottoms. If the man had a thing against moles or birthmarks, and the woman had even a small one on her chin, it would have transformed into something repulsive; something akin to a cockroach crawling along her face.

  Cadet Terence, the same cadet who had bullied me in the lunchroom, leaped in front of the retreating man and pointed a loaded harmonic crossbow at him.

  “Where do you think you’re going?” he said, and fired.

  The arrow disappeared into the man’s chest, but the man was unfazed. Bewildered, Terence quickly reloaded and shot again.

  “Terence!” I hollered. “Get out of there!”

  To my horror, I was looking at my first real yetzer. The Shallow Yetzer leaped out of the man’s head, faced Terence, and roared. Its vile breath hung in the air, a brown cloud of stench. It was a grotesque, red-eyed monster with huge, blubbery haunches, gorilla-like arms, and had a row of bony spikes running down its scaly back. It looked nothing like any of the phony, holographic fear demons I had seen on stage back at the Academy.

  Terence gathered his courage, and withdrawing a tungsten demon dagger, he attacked the monster.

  “Terence, no!” I made a move to run to his aid, but Volk yanked me back.

  The demon’s long, apelike arm shot out and grabbed Terence by the leg. In a single swift motion, the creature whipped him over its shoulder and impaled him on the spikes of its back. The beast ripped away the cadet, bashed him like a club onto the floor, and then flung him through the air.

  I watched Terence’s gutted body sail over my head and smack with a thud into the wall behind me. His squashed body oozed down the wall and dissolved into a pool of clear, syrupy ectoplasm.

  “Oh my God. Terence…”

  Volk rattled off more sightings. “Twelve o’clock, Commitment Yetzer. Nine o’clock, Guilt Yetzer. Six o’clock, Blame Yetzer. Four o’clock, Ooh… Grass-is-greener Yetzer…”

  “Oh, yuck,” I said as I beheld the drooling, black-toothed, three-eyed demon, its gluey tongue stabbing in and out. It looked like a cross between a mangy, rabid donkey and a horny Komodo dragon.2

  [Note 2: A person possessed by a Grass-is-greener Yetzer is never satisfied with any partner. He or she always believes that ‘someone better‘ is ‘just around the corner.’ It often works in tandem with a pus-faced, spindle-legged Commitment Yetzer.]

  Cyrus grimaced. “Yeah, you’ll never get used to looking at that bugger.”

  Volk said, “Love ain’t as pretty as you thought, eh, Kohai?”

  “They’re all over the place!” I said.

  Cupids and yetzers battled everywhere I turned. The cupids fought valiantly, but their weapons seemed utterly ineffective. Harmonic crossbows, love Tasers, passion pulsars, and even lust grenades—all of them, useless.

  “We’ve got to do something!”

  “Steady, Kohai,” Volk cautioned.

  To the humans, everything appeared completely normal. For the more observant of them, the vicious melee registered merely as different would-be wooers ‘striking out.’ To them, the ghastly scene I was witnessing seemed either amusing or pathetic.

  Ellen Veetal rubbed her arms, a little chilled. She looked about for where the ‘draft’ might be coming from.

  A cupid cadet, missing an arm and his uniform in bloodied shreds, stumbled past Ellen. He collapsed to the floor among a group of giggling flibbertigibbets, and died in writhing agony.

  Oblivious to the massacre happening around her, Ellen set her plate down on the table next to a glass of champagne. She took a double take at the glass, and squinted at its rippling contents.

  Another badly mauled cadet flew crashing onto the cake table. He groaned, and then tumbled from the table and out of view onto the floor. The wedding cake shimmied like Jell-O.

  Ellen Veetal seemed to notice it. “Earthquake?” she said to herself.

  I saw the cadet’s remains puddle just short of Miss Veetal’s high heels.

  She looked up and spotted the guy who had previously pocketed her blown kiss. The woman he was talking to suddenly tossed her drink in his face.

  Ellen smirked, and then she turned her attention to the group of ditzy, twittering ladies at whose feet the last remains of a cupid cadet were evaporating. They were pointing mockingly at some poor fellow, and laughing at him. Perhaps it was at his obvious poor taste in clothing.

  I saw not only the three women, but also the three lobster-clawed, bug-eyed, chameleon-faced, Up-to-the-Minute Yetzers that were occupying their bodies.3

  [Note 3: A person possessed by an Up-to-the-Minute Yetzer is obsessed with pop culture or whatever is considered in fashion, hip, or cool. The person keeps up on all the latest movies, bands, celebrities, trends or fads, and wears his or her authority as a badge of honor. The Up-to-the-Minute Yetzer-possessed person is often addicted to social media, and checks it constantly, living or dying by the response received from his or her posts in a dozen different online forums.]

  Like a strobe light, the women flickered between human and demon.

  The mocked man shrank away in humiliation.

  Then, a few feet away, Ellen spotted another woman slap a guy across the face. Ellen’s expression of amusement turned to consternation.

  We cupids were not shielded from the awful truth that had turned the hotel ballroom into a battlefield. All around us was fighting, screaming, and unearthly howling.

  I couldn’t bear seeing my fellow cadets being torn apart by dozens of grotesque and ferocious abominations.

  “It’s a massacre! We can’t just stand here!”

  I made another move to dash out of the circle, when a hideous, toad-like demon-creature leaped in front of me. Man, it was fast!

  The creature halted, balancing on its clawed toes, as if it knew that crossing the lazurite circle would have been like running into an electric fence. Cyrus flicked some lazurite dust in its face. The drooling, snarling beastie let out an ear-splitting whinny, turned, and scampered off.

  I turned to Captain Cyrus, startled out of my wits. “What the hell was that?”

  “Victim Yetzer,” he p
ronounced. “One scratch of those claws and you become a quivering mass of resentment and paranoia.”

  I squinted in determination, reached under my jacket, and brandished a lightning whip.

  The lightning whip didn’t look like a whip because it was only a seven-inch hollow stick composed of assorted metal alloys. The electric tether remained absent until the stick was properly activated. A weapon used by the cupids of ancient times, the Academy knew nothing of its existence. Only cupids trained in the ancient traditions knew how to release its electric power. I discovered the whip and other legendary weapons in the basement of the archives and had been secretly practicing with it. Long ago, the manipulation of the lightning whip was used as evidence that a cupid had attained mastery of his divine, internal energies—his ruach. To date, I had managed to achieve but a smattering of paltry sparks.

  I gave the whip a determined snap, and sent forth my sputtering sprinkle.

  Volk said, “Don’t even think about it, Kohai. That’s an order.”

  Cyrus grabbed my wrist and yanked my communicator to his mouth.

  “Sett, do you read me? Sett!”

  Silence.

  “What’s wrong with this stupid thing?”

  Cyrus located the commander at the far end of the ballroom. Sett was shouting orders to his cadets as he fired away with his demon duster.

  “Make sure Kohai stays put,” he told Volk, and then dashed from the safety of the circle.

  I gawped as Cyrus, with amazing ninja-like agility and gymnastics, outmaneuvered every yetzer in his way. He leaped, dived, rolled, flipped and cartwheeled his way across the ballroom.

  “Wow!” I blurted, yanking on Volk’s sleeve. “Look at him go! Teach me that!”

  Cyrus bounded to the side of Commander Sett, who was shouting orders to his cadets between blasts of his demon duster. His shots seemed to only further enrage the monsters.

  “What the hell is going on?” Sett exclaimed, flustered. “Our weapons are useless.”

  “Never mind that,” Cyrus said over the din. “Just get our boys out of here.”

  “Don’t you think I’ve tried? Someone has jammed my communicator. I can’t reach the disgronifier station.”