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

by Benjamin Laskin

  Lieutenant Chiron, the soldier with the device, a handheld gadget the size of a cell phone with a touch screen on it, frowned and said, “I’m not picking up anything.”

  “If you’re looking for recording bugs,” Grace said to Chiron, “I sweep my office first thing every morning. Oddly, it seems that no matter how often I do it, they keep coming back. You wouldn’t have anything to do with that, would you?”

  The soldier looked at Perseus.

  “What makes you so conscientious, Madam Celestial?” Perseus asked.

  “I consider it standard operating procedure, Captain. One can never be too careful.”

  “Indeed.”

  “Tell me, Captain, as it is a part of my job to keep tabs on all my cupids, do you have an explanation for your recent whereabouts? It appears that you have been on an extended holiday of sorts. I was growing concerned.”

  “You noticed?” Perseus grinned. “I’m flattered. I was in the field doing my job.”

  “Glad to hear it, but why didn’t you sign out? Every mission, even the most secret, requires our soldiers to sign in and out at the disgronifier terminal. Your clearance level does not require you to state your destination, but even you must give some notice of your actions.”

  “I forgot,” he said smugly.

  “Then I suggest you don’t forget again, Captain, or I will be forced to report your absentmindedness to Commander Sett. You may not recognize my authority, but I’m sure that you will acknowledge his.”

  Chiron slid Perseus a knowing smirk, as if to say, ‘not for much longer.’

  Perseus said stonily, “I appreciate your warning, Madam.”

  Sparta reemerged from around the corner and approached Captain Perseus with a book in his hand. The corporal was the youngest of the three, blond with gray eyes and a cleft chin, handsome and well built. He was two years ahead of Virgil and I at the Academy, and graduated at the top of his class. It said a lot for him that someone of Perseus’s stature had taken him under his wing.

  “Captain, Sir,” Sparta said. “I don’t know what this is, but it’s the only thing of interest I found back there.” He handed Grace’s Bible to the captain.

  Perseus looked at it, flipped through its pages, and arched a suspicious eyebrow. “What are you doing with superstitious crap like this on your shelf?”

  “It’s called research, Captain. My job requires all sorts of investigations. Although the book has lost quite a bit of readership among the humans, there are still many people who revere the fables embodied within it. In order for us to better understand these ignoramuses, I felt it important to find out what makes them tick. I can show you some other equally absurd books in my library, if you’re interested. Now, are you gentlemen finished with us? We have work to do.”

  “For now,” Perseus said, ejecting the memory stick from Grace’s computer. He waggled the device in the air. “If forensics comes up with anything interesting, I’ll be back.”

  Perseus pocketed the stick and gave a tug of his head, signally the others to follow him.

  “Excuse me, Captain,” Grace said. “May I have my book back, please?”

  Perseus paused, glanced at the book in his hand, and then tossed it at Grace’s feet. “It’ll go in my report.”

  “As will you and your men’s rude and unwarranted invasion in mine, Captain. Who gave you orders to barge in on me like this? I would like to speak with him.”

  “I told you—Homeland Security.”

  “And they singled me out?”

  “No one is beyond suspicion, Ma’am,” Perseus said. “We are making the rounds.”

  “And you will be crashing Commander Sett’s office as well?”

  “No one is beyond suspicion,” Perseus repeated.

  Grace smirked. “Oh, I’m sure he’ll be most accommodating.”

  “If he is a loyal cupid soldier, then there is no reason he would be anything but.”

  “Are you questioning the commander’s loyalty?”

  “That will be up to him,” Perseus replied gravely. He turned and the three cupids strutted out the door.

  After the cupids were gone, Hera turned to Grace, a look of panic on her face. “Madam Grace—”

  “Shh,” Grace whispered, her finger to her lips.

  Grace walked over to her desk and pulled out her debugging device. She motioned to Hera to cover her eyes and flicked the single red switch. A moment later they heard three fizzy pops, followed by an acrid smell and the sight of wisps of black smoke. The strands of smoke came from under her desk, the bookcase, and the back alcove.

  “They really do think I’m stupid,” Grace said.

  “Madam, your computer,” Hera said nervously.

  “It’s okay. I don’t keep anything shocking on it, and the Maccabee files are on a separate server that no one but you and I know about. It’s untraceable.”

  “Are they on to us, Madam Grace? I was extremely careful, I swear!”

  “They may be, but it’s not your fault if they are, Hera. If Homeland Security is doing their job, they will have detected some peculiar goings on over the recent weeks. I will contact Commander Sett and Captain Volk and warn them.”

  “But how? They are at the yeshiva. We can’t reach them there.”

  “I can…I think.”

  “Ma’am?”

  Grace walked to the center of the room and extended her arms.

  “Pray I don’t get lost,” she said. “It’s my first solo flight.”

  Hera’s little blue peepers turned to goblets as she watched her boss begin to whirl. Grace’s dress billowed and her long, silvery hair whipped around her like a propeller. It took her about thirty seconds to launch, and blur out of sight.

  “Wow,” Hera said. “Madam Grace, you so rock!” She began to imitate her boss, grew quickly dizzy, and fell on her rump laughing.

  “What do you think, Captain?” Lieutenant Chiron said as the three cupids strolled out of the executive office building and onto the sidewalk. “Is she with us or not?”

  “Definitely not,” Perseus said. “But that doesn’t mean she’s against us either. There are a lot of Anteros cupids and celestials who are on a need to know basis only, including Grace. As far as we can tell, she’s still one of us.”

  “You’d think that someone of her rank would have been clued in,” Chiron said. “We could use someone like her.”

  Perseus shook his head. “We considered it, but she is too tight with Sett, and he’s no idiot. If he so much as suspected her of anything, he’d wring the truth out of her.”

  Chiron said, “It’s too bad we couldn’t recruit Sett to our cause. It would have made things so much easier. Did we even try?”

  “No.”

  “How come?” Sparta asked. “From what I’ve seen and heard, he doesn’t seem all that thrilled about how the judges run things here.”

  “Sett is old, old school, Corporal,” Perseus said. “Don’t confuse crotchety with disillusionment. The guy is a walking antique. He may not approve of how things are, but his hatred for Anteros is deeper than his disgust with the likes of Minos. He was my commanding officer during the Civil War. We lost half of our best cupids during that war. He’ll never forgive Anteros for that. The last thing he’d ever consider would be an Anteros heaven. I have no doubt that these Solow Accords are eating him up inside.”

  “Wouldn’t that make him a prime suspect?” Sparta said. “He has motive. Why don’t we pick him up?”

  “He has motive, sure,” Perseus agreed. “But he has loyalty too. Besides, he’s in charge of the cupid entourage to Solow. What could he do down there with eleven unarmed men? Squat. He’ll be surrounded by hundreds of Anteros commandos, and behind them enough trained fear demons to turn him and his group into mulch. We couldn’t ask for anything better. The last place we want Sett and Volk is up here.”

  “We’re not afraid of them, are we?” Sparta said, full of the bluster of youth.

  Lieutenant Chiron smacked Sparta alon
g the side of his head for his temerity. “Captain Perseus is afraid of no one!”

  “At ease, Lieutenant,” Perseus said. “It’s not a question of fear, Corporal. Sett and Volk are more than valiant soldiers. Sett is the closest thing we have to a living Immortal. He would rampage through hell with a can of gasoline on his back to protect his men and the honor of the cupids. Even those who have sided with Anteros know this about him, and so many would follow him. We can’t risk that. No, the best thing for us is to keep him in the dark. The less he knows, the better our chances of success.”

  “You mentioned Volk,” Sparta said. “He’s a joke, right? No one takes him seriously, especially since his pal was downdrafted. What threat could he possibly pose?”

  Perseus stopped and faced Sparta, a grave look on his face. “Son, do you know any cupid who ever challenged Volk or Cyrus to their faces?”

  “No, but—”

  “No, you haven’t. You haven’t because there is not one cupid in Heaven who would be that stupid. Sett, Volk, Cyrus—they are all that is left from the days of the originals. They know things, things long forgotten by the rest of us.”

  “Like what?” Sparta asked.

  “The ancient code. The ancient ways. You are brave, Sparta. Chiron is brave. Volk is not brave—he is fearless.”

  Chiron said, “Then how come he doesn’t have any medals or awards?”

  “Because such things do not interest him.”

  “But why?” Sparta asked. “Being recognized by the Academy is a great honor!”

  “I told you. They live with a different code. Such things are meaningless to them.”

  “But you could take him, Captain,” Sparta insisted.

  “I have no interest in a contest with any of these cupids,” Perseus said. “I harbor no animosity towards them, and hold them in the highest regard. Captain Volk has never shown me anything but courtesy and respect.

  “In fact, he once risked his life to save mine. It was a long time ago, but a squad I was leading was ambushed by a pack of fear demons at an outdoor wedding. We were outnumbered twenty to one. Captains Volk and Cyrus appeared out of nowhere and attacked their flank, drawing the demon’s attention away from us long enough for us to regroup and fight back. Had they not shown up, me and my men would have been goners. Cyrus and Volk fought with a fury I never saw before. I didn’t think such moves were possible, but I witnessed their expertise with my own eyes and have never forgotten it.”

  “If Sett and Volk are such badasses,” Lieutenant Chiron said, “what do you think they’ll do when they find out that while they are on Earth with the judges getting suckered into signing Solow, Anteros forces are busy conquering Heaven?”

  “By then it will be too late,” Perseus said. “Once we secure the disgronifiers, there will be no way for them to return. And should they figure out what is going on, it won’t matter how skilled they are, because weaponless they will be no match for what awaits them at the fortress.” Perseus shook his head regretfully. “They deserve a better end, but soldiers rarely get to choose their own endings—even the great ones.”

  10

  Fancy Pants

  “How’d they do?” Volk asked.

  “As expected,” I answered.

  “Wet their pants, huh?”

  “Yep, but by the third run they were getting the hang of it.”

  Captain Volk and I were standing outside the yeshiva study hall. Inside, Virgil was conducting an emuna class with the recruits. After the recruits had been thoroughly humbled in the ghost town, they were all eager to learn what Virgil had to say.

  What went down in the ghost town was a version of what Volk and Cyrus had pulled on me way back when they locked me in the yeshiva archives, turned off the lights, and conjured up some ferocious fear demons. This time, however, Virgil and I performed the wizardry. As the cupid angels ran through the obstacle course, they were chased and harassed by an unstoppable and unending succession of yetzers that Virgil and I were conjuring up for them through a locking mind-meld from atop a bell tower near the center of the makeshift town.

  Recruit Typhon was partially correct. What we did was similar to the staged virtual reality show the Academy uses, only our yetzers and Anteros soldiers looked and acted like the real thing, and it was all done without the use of special helmets or technology.

  By combining our minds, Virgil and I were able to ‘lift’ the world around our recruits to a higher, albeit virtual vibration, and so achieve almost perfect verisimilitude. It was a trick that Captain Volk taught us the day before. As far as the recruits knew, the enemy was one hundred percent real, and they were running and fighting for their lives as if they had found themselves surrounded by an army of inescapable and relentless killers.

  The point of the exercise was to force each recruit to rely on his angelic instincts and resources, to master his fear, and to unite his mind, body, and soul into a super-charged expression of Divine Will. As long as the recruits saw themselves as independent entities—cupid soldiers who merely carried out an order—they would never come close to their true potential. They had to understand at their deepest core that they were angels of God, and so were imbued with powers that can transcend the limits of the physical world around them.

  By the final round of the exercises, the recruits were having a grand time tearing through the town. They scampered up the sides of buildings, leaped soaring from rooftop to rooftop, dove recklessly through windows, swung like monkeys from poles and tree limbs, hurdled fences and hedges, flipped, somersaulted, and rolled from one obstacle to another, dodging what they perceived as capture or death.

  Captain Volk took notice of the sun coming up over the hill. “Today I want to concentrate on weapons training.”

  “Okay,” I said, “but what kind of weapons? Aren’t they going to frisk us as soon as we touch down?”

  “We’re going to have to improvise until we get our hands on some real weapons.”

  “Improvise?”

  “Follow me.”

  We walked to a wooden shed around the back of the yeshiva that faced one of the training fields. Volk opened the door and lit a gas lantern.

  Inside the shed I saw gardening and carpentry tools, cans of paint, including a special red, fluorescent paint that was only visible to the eyes of angels, more maintenance materials, and equipment that had been sitting untouched for a millennium. Among the clutter I spotted battle armor and gear from the misty past: Roman, Greek, and Samurai armor, chainmail, shields, helmets, uniforms, and an array of ancient weapons.

  “What’s all this?” I asked, picking up and examining an old medieval helmet. I put it on and opened the visor.

  Volk swatted the visor shut. “Just what it looks like. Junk.”

  “Cool junk!” I declared. “Did we use to wear this stuff too?”

  “So I was told, yeah. On the rare occasions when we appeared in front of the humans we had to fit in. History has been one long costume party.”

  “Wait, you mean we use to be able to appear before a human?”

  “When we were angels, yes. But after we became mere cupids, no.”

  “But we’re angels again, right? How come we can’t do it now?”

  “The secret has been lost. Although we are at a much higher level than the cupids at the Academy are now, we are still nothing compared to where we once were. Also, don’t forget, the humans have fallen just as low. It’s a two-way street.”

  “Two-way street?”

  Volk explained: “In ancient times, and later when the holy temple existed in Jerusalem, the Shekhinah—God’s presence or glory—covered the globe, lifting the world to a higher vibration. It was not so uncommon for humans to see, hear, and do things that today would be considered impossible. It was the Shekhinah that allowed the prophets to prophesy and perform great miracles, for instance.

  “With the destruction of the First Temple by the Babylonians in 586 BC, however, the Shekhinah withdrew, leaving behind a much lower, and
less spiritual vibration. It was around that time, you’ll notice, the 6th century BC, that philosophy was born—a crude, too often confused substitute for divine knowledge and wisdom.

  “As the centuries tumbled on,” he further explained, “both we and the humans continued to drop to new spiritual lows. By the time the Romans destroyed the Second Temple, the divergence was complete. Today, even philosophy is dead. Philosophy, poetry, the classics, few people can even name an example of any of them. If you were to ask the typical college graduate who the pre-Socratics were, he’d likely guess they were some rock band that his grandparents used to listen to.

  “Now,” Volk continued, “it is true that some holy sages, like our friend the Baal Shem Tov, to name but one, have been able to generate enough spiritual juice to tap into the holy Shekhinah and catch glimmers of the sublime, but they have been few and far between. Today, between both of our fallen natures, we have become invisible to one another.”

  Volk cleared away some rubbish and pulled forward a heavy wooden chest at the back of the shed. He opened the lid and held the lantern over it.”

  “Clothes?”

  “Our new uniforms,” Volk clarified. He searched through the folded uniforms, found what he was looking for, and tossed one to me. “Try it on.”

  I undressed and put on the uniform. It was a cross between a modern soldier’s black and gray camouflage and something a ninja might wear. The cargo pants had numerous pockets, the top was long-sleeved and loose fitting, and there was even a lightweight vest.

  “How do I look?” I asked.

  “Badass. Let’s go out and see what’s under the hood.”

  “Huh?”

  We left the shed and stood out front in the morning light. I noticed that the camouflage changed to mimic the new surroundings.

  “Cool,” I said. “I’m a chameleon.”

  “That’s not all. Lift up your shirt.”

  I did as told and revealed the leather belt around my waist.