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

by Benjamin Laskin

  Note 13: A human possessed by a Mocking Yetzer confuses an acerbic and cynical sense of humor with genius and wisdom. Late-night television hosts and cable TV newscasters and their guests are favorite breeding grounds for the Mocking Yetzer. Smug, condescending, derisive, and snarky—the Mocking Yetzer’s host seeks to demolish the lives and reputations of their targets. It isn’t enough to chide its victims; the Mocking Yetzer-possessed person must eviscerate them. Wit, half-truths, and innuendo are his weapons of choice.

  I strolled through the restaurant and passed my hand over the customers one by one, revealing the dozens of freakish yetzers hiding within them. At one table I came to a young man who was clearly the life of the party. Charming, wickedly wry and satirical; comical, mocking abuse flowed from his mouth like cheap champagne.

  “Found one!” I said.

  Volk grabbed the soldier by the scruff and directed his attention towards me. I passed my hand over the student’s head and held it there so that the soldier could get a good long look at the dozing Mocking Yetzer.

  Volk said, “Want us to wake him and see if he wants to come out and play?”

  The soldier trembled. “I-I don’t know who ordered the hit. I just follow orders.”

  “Kohai, we know how much Mr. Mocking Demon hates to be disturbed, but give him a little tickle, would you?”

  “No!” the soldier cried, knowing well that once awoken the yetzer would have quite an appetite. “Hamanaeus,” he blurted. “The order came from Hamanaeus.”

  “Why? What does he want?”

  “To shut down Heaven.”

  “And how does he propose to do that?”

  The soldier hesitated.

  “Kohai,” Volk said, “sprinkle a little demon bait in front of our mangy friend.”

  I reached into a cargo pocket of my uniform and pulled out a black satin pouch. I waved it for the soldier to see.

  “One whiff of this,” I said, “and he’ll be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.”

  “Stop! Okay, okay. By stopping the Swerver.”

  “Ellen Veetal?”

  “Yeah, her. She’s the one.”

  “Go on,” Volk said.

  The soldier narrowed his eyes and gathered up what was left of his dissipating pride. He began to parrot what had been preached to him.

  “She’s the final Swerver,” he said. “The last chance. Stop this one and it’s lights out for the Academy. With the Swerver neutralized, the demons will chomp through the few remaining shreds of human decency. They will sweep across the globe in one immense, dark night of the soul. All pretenses to love extinguished, so too will be the excuse for your futile existence. The Academy will come begging to Hamanaeus to help them, abdicating all power to him. Anteros will return to Heaven in glory and start a new era where every cupid will prostrate before him and sing his praises.”

  Volk said, “You don’t say? Why would the Academy believe for a moment that you could do a better job? And how do you plan to keep the fear demons from extinguishing you too?”

  “The humans are doomed. Only Anteros can save them.”

  “I got that part already, pal. Why?”

  The soldier balked.

  “Kohai…?”

  I made a move to open the pouch.

  “All right, all right,” the soldier said. “We made a deal with them.”

  “A deal? With fear demons? Demons don’t do deals.”

  “They do with us. While you Eros dogs have been lounging in your arrogant decadence, we have been building alliances and an empire on Earth. We help to provide the demons with human souls, and in return they leave us alone.”

  “You are more deluded than I thought if you believe that. The demons will turn on you and devour your asses whenever they choose.”

  “You underestimate Anteros. Have you ever seen anything like that outside—cupids riding on trained demons? No, you haven’t. While you have been messing around with your potions and gizmos, we’ve been working on a master plan. Only we know how to keep Heaven from crashing down. Once we are in power, we will rebalance Heaven and Earth. We will do away with love and replace it with the fear of Anteros. There will be no more freewill—just submission to Anteros, the greatest love of all.”

  “Beautiful,” Volk said. “I can hardly wait. One more question. If Hamanaeus identified the Swerver, why not eliminate her yourselves? Why involve the Academy and risk that we’d find out who she was?”

  “A trap perfectly sprung,” said the soldier. “It was always lose-lose for your Captain Cyrus. Now with the Academy’s top cupid commando out of the way, there is nothing to stop us.”

  “Right,” Volk said. “So then why the ambush? With both the Swerver and Captain Cyrus already out of the picture, why bother trying to take me out too?”

  “It wasn’t part of the original plan. We figured that you’d have been smart enough to learn from Cyrus’s mistake, be a good little cupid soldier, and butt out. When we spotted you snooping around we decided that we had better not take any chances.”

  “Kohai,” Volk ordered, “cuff him.”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  I jogged over and withdrew two pairs of roped handcuffs from my utility belt. I secured the Anteros soldier’s hands and ankles, and dragged him to the side of the room. I set him against the wall. He spat in my face.

  “Oh, man,” I said, wiping my face with my sleeve. “That was really uncalled for.”

  The soldier smirked. “Your time is coming, punk. You’re mine.”

  “We’ll see about that,” I said.

  “Kohai,” Volk commanded. “Whirl on home. I’ll be right behind you.”

  “Yes, Sir.” I went into orbit mode and spun away.

  “Whoa,” the soldier said. “How the hell did he do that? I know you don’t learn that at your stinking Academy.”

  “You’re right,” Volk said. “And at yours, you don’t learn manners.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You spat on my cadet—an angel of God—and threatened his life.”

  The soldier snorted. “An angel? Yeah, right. What am I, chopped liver?”

  Volk grinned. “Not yet.”

  “Huh? You gave your word that you’d let me live if I talked. I know you won’t go back on it.”

  “I’ll let you live as promised,” Volk said, walking over to the young man with the Mocking Yetzer. He held his hand over the head of the student, revealing the snoring beast within.

  “Hey,” the soldier said nervously, “w-what are you doing?”

  Volk poked the yetzer in the eye, waking the monster to a roar. He pulled a slingshot from his utility belt, loaded an egg-like projectile into its pocket, and fired it at the Anteros soldier. The egg smashed into the soldier’s forehead, splattering him with yellow, foul-smelling goo.

  “What is this stuff? It stinks!”

  “A demon delicacy. You’re alive. I kept my word. Good luck explaining to the demons about the chummy deal Hamanaeus made with them.”

  Volk whirled off.

  The Mocking Yetzer, followed by a dozen other ravenous yetzers, bounded from their hosts and charged at the shrieking soldier.

  Shooting Eros

  Emuna Chronicle 2: Heaven-sent

  He will charge His angels for you, to protect you in all your ways.

  On their palms they will carry you, lest you strike your foot against a stone.

  Psalms 91:11-12

  1

  Enemy of My Enemy

  Captain Volk strode into Grace’s office. Grace’s secretary—a pretty, young celestial named Hera—hustled in after him.

  “I’m sorry,” Hera exclaimed, pleading for understanding, “but the captain just charged right past me!”

  “I understand, Hera. It’s okay. You can leave us.”

  “Yes, Ma’am. I’m very sorry.” She shot Volk an icy squint and left the room.

  Grace put down the book she was reading. “I haven’t changed my mind, Captain.”


  “You haven’t thought about it at all?”

  “I’ve dismissed that entire day. Put it completely out of my mind. So, unless you have something of importance to excuse your impertinence, I will ask you to leave and to never be so discourteous to my staff again.”

  “Completely out of your mind?”

  “That’s right. I want nothing to do with your schemes and crazy notions.”

  “Then why are you reading that?” He pointed to the thick book on her desk.

  “What? This?” She placed the book into a desk drawer. “It’s nothing.”

  Volk smiled. “It’s the Bible, Grace. You are reading the Bible.”

  “So what if I am?” she replied, indignant. “It doesn’t mean anything.”

  “Where did you get it?”

  “You’re not the only one with an archive. The Academy has a huge library. Much bigger than yours, I might add. I had an Academy archivist look for a copy. She found one in the corner of the basement. It hadn’t been checked out for hundreds of years.”

  “So, if you’re not interested, why the interest?”

  “It’s part of my job to know what makes my cupids tick.”

  “I see. And where are you in the book?”

  “Moses is leading the Israelites out of bondage, but Pharaoh’s army has him trapped at the Red Sea. He’s in big trouble.”

  “Someone sure is.”

  “Tell me,” Grace said, “Moses’s God, is he the same one you talk about?”

  “One and the same.”

  “Then, if we are His angels, why does He ignore us?”

  Volk quoted King David’s Psalm 34. “‘The eyes of the Lord are to the righteous, and His ears are to their cry.’ Grace, it is we who ignore Him. We turned our backs to Him a long time ago, so He turned His face from us. However,” he added, quoting from the same psalm, ‘I sought the Lord, and He heard me, and delivered me from all my fears.’”

  “You spoke of other angels besides us,” Grace said. “Are they all still within the company of your God?”

  “Yes.”

  “Have you met one?”

  “No, but I’ve heard them, as did you during our brief travel together.”

  “That music, the choir? Those were angels?”

  “Beautiful, wasn’t it? Have you ever heard anything like that here?”

  “Are you kidding?” Grace snorted. “Stroll by any Academy dormitory and all you hear is that horrible, blaring noise that the soldiers picked up from the humans. It’s—”

  “Crap?”

  Grace nodded regretfully.

  “Grace, I didn’t come here to talk to you about the other day. I’ve come to tell you about some troubling developments. Cadet Kohai and I were down on Earth and we stumbled into a very messy situation. We almost didn’t stumble back out alive.”

  “Go on.”

  “We came face to face with soldiers of Anteros.”

  “The rumors are true?”

  “The rumors don’t go nearly far enough. They are much more organized and deadly than we could have imagined.”

  “Deadly? They left here with nothing. A ragtag army, beaten and humiliated.”

  “According to Academy history, anyway,” Volk said. “They were fully armed, and not only do they possess the same weapons as we, they have something we don’t.”

  “What’s another splicer or plasma gun? You can only kill someone so dead.”

  “Not guns. Fear demons.”

  “What?”

  “They have somehow managed to train an army of fear demons. The Anteros soldiers ride them into battle like Hannibal did elephants against Rome. I saw it with my own eyes.”

  “But that’s preposterous,” Grace scoffed. “How could they manage such a feat?”

  “I don’t know, but I’m guessing they capture young fear demons and train them. But that’s not the worst of it. I learned that the leader of the Anteros cult, Hamanaeus, has made a deal with the fear demons to work together to overthrow the Academy.”

  “A deal with demons? That’s absurd. And besides, why would even ex-cupids—?”

  “The enemy of my enemy is my friend,” Volk stated.

  “Have you spoken with Minos or Sett about what you experienced?”

  “Just you.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t trust them.”

  “You may have your philosophical disagreements, but they are not traitors.”

  “Not in their minds, anyway,” Volk rejoined.

  “What do you mean by that? And think twice before you answer,” she warned.

  “They will do whatever they believe is necessary to save their own skins.”

  “Surely not Commander Sett,” Grace said, appalled at the idea that he would ever succumb to any sort of treachery.

  “I don’t question Sett’s loyalty. I do, however, question his wisdom. But I am speaking about the judges and Academy professors. You are aware of the Solow Accords, aren’t you?”

  “Yes…” Grace answered hesitantly. “But you’re not supposed to be.”

  “Well, I am. And with what I now know, they take on a whole new meaning.”

  “Explain.”

  “Hamanaeus plans to use the fear demons and the Solow Accords to overthrow the Academy and take control of Heaven. He sees things getting so bad on Earth that the flunkies at the Academy will have no choice but to hand over power to him and his cult if we want to stay alive. For the Academy, Solow is a desperate attempt to grab a little extra rope to hang ourselves on. As far as the judges are concerned, the war with the yetzers is already lost. They are just trying to buy time in the hopes of coming up with something down the road that will save us from extinction. They will accomplish neither.”

  “Do you think the Academy knows the extent of Hamanaeus’s operation and the power the Anteros cult has attained down there?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “How much time do you think we have, Captain?”

  “Until Solow is signed.”

  Grace picked up a remote and directed Volk’s attention to the wall on his left. She clicked the remote and the entire wall became an immense plasma screen.

  “What’s this?” Volk asked.

  “Another ticking time bomb. The first thing I did when I was handed this position was to order Hera and a team of researchers to give me a full update on the human situation. I told them not to rely on Academy sources, but to go into the field and gather the data themselves. Yesterday the team presented me with this…”

  2

  Time Bomb

  Grace hit play, and together they watched a disturbing, hour-long presentation of Earth’s state of affairs in the year 2034, and the events that led to the humans’ current situation.

  Employing charts, photos, and streamed video from human sources around Earth, the presentation documented a world under pressures not seen since the run-up to previous civilizational collapses. After a decades-long cultural deterioration that included record levels of divorce, broken homes, pornography, adultery, spousal and child abuse, unwed mothers, abortion, alcoholism, drug abuse, venereal disease, illiteracy, hate crimes, mass migrations, rape, riots, theft, murder, terrorism, gang violence, governmental corruption, and suicide at epidemic proportions, the final straw arrived in the form of an imploding global economy under the weight of hundreds of trillions of dollars of debt and long-term liabilities.

  A tumultuous decade followed, as the worldwide economic contagion quickly gave way to revolutions, civil wars, martial law, and power struggles that were still going on.

  Rampant, skyrocketing inflation, government confiscation of savings accounts, and cyber-attacks wiped out the life savings of most everyone everywhere, except for the well-connected; i.e., those who were most responsible for the collapse.

  No country was spared the consequences of the pandemonium. In many countries, unemployment reached thirty, forty, even fifty percent, resulting in hundreds of millions of people without food or she
lter.

  Making an already dire situation more unbearable, water and energy shortages became an everyday occurrence, thanks to decades of strangling regulations imposed on industries, businesses, and individuals in the name of the earth goddess, “Gaia.” Yet, after decades of political hysteria, the only climate that ever changed was the social one, the only temperatures to rise were those resulting from white-hot anger, and the only oceans to surge was a teeming sea of humanity left out in the cold.

  A bitter and resentful world had gotten its wish, and so now the only thing hyper about the world’s hyper-power, the U.S. of A., became its rate of inflation. No longer able to play the role of world policeman, the country pulled back into “fortress America.”

  America, which the rest of the world was eager to blame for the economic and social collapse plaguing mankind, found itself struggling with the greatest crises in her history. The economic disaster proved far more severe than that which followed the 1929 stock market crash, and the disharmony within the country exceeded even that of the 19th century American Civil War.

  The report documented how the country’s major inner cities rioted and rampaged for months on end—looting, torching, and destroying huge swathes of their metropolises—causing hundreds of thousands of people to flee to the suburbs, or leave their cities altogether. Martial law was enacted, and the cost in both lives and treasure was tremendous.

  The division kept the country mired in stagnation. One political side advocated for yet higher taxes and a still stronger, more centralized federal government and welfare state, denouncing any government cuts but those to the already emasculated military. The opposition party, meanwhile, differed not in direction, but only in degrees. They argued for a slower growth of the same monolithic government, insisting that, given the opportunity, they could better manage it.

  According to the presentation, as the establishment on both sides of the political aisle squabbled and accused the other of an unwillingness to compromise, an ever-increasing number of disgusted Americans believed that it was precisely decades of compromise that had driven the country into its hopeless corner.