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

by Benjamin Laskin

  Malkah blanched. She could only imagine one such person. Cyrus an informant? Was he evil? What have I gotten myself into? She rubbed at the goose bumps on her arms.

  19

  Night Vision

  “Are you okay?” Gideon asked.

  “Yeah. This is all just a little too eerie. Even for me.”

  “Believe me, Malkah, I don’t like contemplating this stuff any more than you do.”

  Gideon slowed and turned off the main highway onto an unmarked, gravel utility road and past a large No Trespassing sign.

  “Where are you going?” she asked warily.

  “I just want to check something out. It will only take a minute.”

  Gideon proceeded down the road, which winded and climbed for about a half a mile through the woods. His headlights revealed nothing except for trees and scrub brush, shadows, and more ominous-looking No Trespassing signs.

  “There’s nothing here,” Malkah said, apprehension in her voice. “What are you looking for?”

  “At the top of this next hill you’ll have the answer.”

  Before reaching the hill’s crescent, he turned off his headlights, slowed, stopped, and then maneuvered his vehicle until he had turned it around and pointed it in the direction he had come. Malkah watched him with increasing uneasiness.

  “Come on,” he said. “I want to show you something.” He reached into the backseat, grabbed a small daypack, and dragged it up and over. He got out of the car, leaving the vehicle idling.

  “Where are we going?”

  “Just to the top of this hill. Come on.”

  Malkah scrunched her face in hesitation, but reluctantly joined him. As they approached the summit he whispered to her to keep low and to follow him. He hugged the edge of the woods among the bushes and trees.

  At the top of the knoll Gideon lay down and motioned to Malkah to do the same. He pulled a pair of high-powered night-vision binoculars from his bag and handed them to Malkah, who to his surprise, adjusted them without needing instruction. He pointed off into the distance.

  “See anything?” he whispered.

  Malkah focused her binoculars. “Trees…oh, wait. Is that…a hotel?”

  “That’s no hotel. That’s someone’s home.”

  “It’s huge,” Malkah exclaimed in a hush. “It looks like a resort.” She sharpened the binoculars a little more and incrementally swept the premises. “It’s in the middle of nowhere,” she remarked. “Are those caves alongside the mountain there?”

  “Yep, it’s a mini Tora Bora.”

  “And is this the only road in?”

  “No, there’s another on the back side. But the owner never uses them himself. They are for utility and construction crews, and to bring in food and other supplies. There is a helicopter pad on the roof of the central building. That’s what the owner uses.”

  “This place must have cost a fortune to build,” Malkah said.

  “Spare change for him. He owns a dozen just like it around the world.”

  “Is he there now? Maybe he’ll give me a job,” she joked.

  “Unlikely, but in a few weeks he’ll be here for sure.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Remember I said that if we could track the yetzers they’d lead us to the Lamed-Vavniks?”

  “Yeah…?”

  “Well, in our world, things work a little differently,” he said. “Track the human yetzers and they’ll eventually lead you to the devil himself.”

  “The what?” Malkah said, smothering her exclamation. “Don’t tell me there are human yetzers and devils. I can’t keep all these things straight anymore.”

  “Just a figure of speech,” Gideon assured her, motioning for her to pass him the binoculars. “I’m talking human scum.”

  “Bad guys,” Malkah said.

  “Evil bastards.” He handed her back the binoculars and pointed. “Check out the water tower and the roofs of the two buildings beside it.”

  Malkah scanned the grounds and located them. “The place looks like a fortress,” she remarked. “Wait…” She re-calibrated her binoculars. “Are those—?”

  “Yes,” Gideon said. “Machine guns on the roofs. And those little white dots you see roaming about, those are guards. They are all ex-military guys from around the world—recruited from Russia, NATO, and UN forces. They have been drifting in for the past couple of weeks.”

  “Why?”

  “A summit,” Gideon said. “They are part of the security team for the puppeteers that are on their way to discuss why their plan is taking so long.”

  “You mean like the G8 or G20, or whatever the number is we’re at these days?”

  “Bigger. Badder. But trust me, this summit is not going to be on any news channels.”

  “Does our government know about this?”

  “It depends which government you’re talking about,” Gideon said.

  “Huh?”

  “The elected government or the shadow government that gets them elected? In either case, none of the attending officials will be anyone we’ve ever heard of or seen on TV.” He checked his watch and retrieved the binoculars for another look. “Right on schedule. Let’s go. The Humvees are about to make their rounds.”

  Gideon and Malkah returned to the car and headed back towards the main highway. She was relieved to be on the road again.

  “So, this was clearly not the first time you visited that spot,” she said.

  “Hardly.”

  “Why are you interested in some rich guy’s playground?”

  “Because I believe that the man who owns that place murdered my grandfather.”

  Malkah gasped. “Seriously?”

  Gideon nodded. “His name is Alexander Rosso. Ever hear of him?”

  “Should I have?”

  “Everyone should, but few ever will. He keeps a low profile. He’s well known in certain elite circles, but unless you’re obsessed with the world of high finance, or are a real political junkie, there’s no reason that a waitress at Saul’s Deli would ever know about him. People like him are not very into people like us.”

  “If he’s not into people like us, why would he target people like your grandfather?”

  “Because I think he’s aware of the legend of the Lamed-Vavniks. I think he believes that by eliminating them he can demolish the world as we know it, and rebuild it in his own image. He and his pals have already smashed most of the traditional pillars that held up society, yet somehow, and much to their irritation, opposition to his wrecking ball has managed to stagger on. Such is the power of faith—and perhaps, the power of the prayers of the Lamed-Vavniks. For a malignant narcissist and demigod like Rosso, this is maddening.”

  “But that’s just crazy,” Malkah blurted.

  “In practice,” Gideon said, “but not necessarily in principle. There is almost nothing or no one in the world that he can’t buy, control, intimidate or manipulate. Except the righteous. To Alexander Rosso, ridding the world of the righteous is a sport. A duty, really. The guy detests anyone who doesn’t subscribe to his cultish views. In much of the Western world he and his cabal of elites have already succeeded in supplanting the old ethos with a jackbooted humanism. In place of God, we are expected to revere an all-powerful, “beneficent” central government, which he and his fellow self-anointed Brahmans control.”

  “One religion seems to still be flourishing.”

  “Yes, they who can’t be named, challenged, or questioned, because in Rosso’s world, truth is the new hate speech. They and Rosso’s merry band of One Worlders use each other…for now. But both ideologies understand that the world isn’t big enough for the two of them. They will bloody one another’s nose from time to time, but on the whole they scratch each other’s back.”

  “Say you’re right,” Malkah said, “that still doesn’t explain how he could know who the Lamed-Vavniks are.”

  “Okay, this is the last weird part, I promise.”

  “Sure, it is,” Mal
kah said, dubious.

  “In some ways,” Gideon began, “we are a mirror image of what goes on above, or in another dimension, if you prefer. Say a fallen angel, or a group of them, was forced out of Heaven and sought refuge on Earth. They’d be invisible to us all the same, but they would attract, and be attracted to, their human counterparts. The fallen would draw energy from our own malevolent members, and vice versa.”

  Malkah thought back to her conversation with Cyrus. What Gideon was describing was eerily similar to Cyrus’s account of the Civil War in Heaven among the cupids. Didn’t he mention something about a group of renegade cupids, something he called Anteros, retreating down to Earth?

  The similarities in their stories stunned her. Everything Gideon had been revealing to her was in line with Cyrus’s own tale. She wanted badly to confide in Gideon, but having sworn an oath of secrecy, she dared not. If she hadn’t have met Cyrus, she’d surely have insisted that Gideon was delusional; that he take her home immediately, and never speak to her again. It was all too preposterous.

  And yet, both Gideon and Cyrus seemed otherwise normal. Okay, not normal, she admitted to herself, but not scary or deranged either. They were intelligent, articulate, and self-effacing. Gentlemen.

  Malkah said, “But these fallen angels, or whatever they might be, they can’t communicate across their dimensions, interact with us, or tamper with our free will, right?”

  “Not directly they can’t, but I think they might be able to exert some influences indirectly. The corrupted angel could, conceivably, pass on information through the use of serendipity and coincidence. He could draw the human’s attention to certain things by tweaking the natural world around him, so to speak.”

  Malkah mused aloud, “But all the while the human—in this case, this Rosso creep—he would be oblivious to such things, right?”

  “Especially Rosso,” Gideon replied. “Like I said, he doesn’t believe in anything beyond his own colossal ego. He doesn’t believe in God, so he definitely wouldn’t believe in angels or the like.”

  “But what does Anter—” Malkah caught herself. “What would such celestial entities get out of all of this?”

  “It’s the mirror image, again,” Gideon said. “People like Alexander Rosso would control the material plane, and correspondingly, the disgraced angels the spiritual. It’s the ancient principle of, ‘as above, so below.’”

  Malkah stared out the side window in silence. It was pitch dark now, and all that she could see was a blur of passing shadows cast by the car’s headlights.

  She wondered what any of this lunacy had to do with her. Of all people, why did her path cross with that of these two weirdos? Was she a weirdo too?

  Malkah was never interested in this sort of thing. Although she never denied or regretted her heritage, she was not particularly religious. In her heart of hearts, she supposed that she had always believed in something greater than herself or this world, but that’s as far as it went. Nobody talked about such things. In public school such matters were taboo. You could talk about other religions, but not one based on the Bible, unless it was to denigrate it.

  All she ever really wanted was something meaningful to do and a loving guy to share her life with. What was she doing here with this man? She turned her gaze upward to the thousands of twinkling stars they were speeding beneath, as if looking for an explanation.

  “A little overwhelming, isn’t it?” Gideon said gently.

  Malkah wasn’t sure if he meant his story or the multitude of stars against their infinite backdrop.

  “More than a little,” she replied.

  “Well, look, it’s nothing for you to worry about. These matters are out of your hands. As far as you need be concerned, this alternate reality may as well be occurring on the other side of the universe, trillions of light-years away.”

  Although the words themselves sounded patronizing again to Malkah, his tone was not. To her it implied that neither she nor anyone else need be concerned, because he, Gideon Baer, was going to do something about it.

  “Then why did you mention any of this in the first place?”

  “I probably shouldn’t have,” Gideon confessed. “But, I guess I just thought it important that you know where I’m coming from. It might help explain some of my foibles and future actions.”

  “You’re not thinking of doing anything stupid, are you?”

  After a pause that Malkah found disturbingly long, Gideon answered, “I hope not.”

  20

  Lost in Space

  Grace nodded to her secretary, Hera, that it was okay, and to close the door. “So, what did I do to deserve the honor of your rude and unscheduled visit, Commander?”

  “I’m not going to make a damn appointment to see a celestial, lady.”

  Grace smiled and bowed her head. “Understood, Commander. I’m always at the service of our soldiers. How may I help you?”

  Sett grabbed a straight back chair from the side of the room, kicked away the plush one in front of Grace’s desk, and set it down with the chair’s back facing Grace. He sat spread eagle, his arms folded in a no-nonsense fashion on top of the backrest.

  “We have a problem,” he said, “and unfortunately I have no one else to discuss it with but you.”

  Grace put a slender finger to her lips signaling silence. She pulled a device the size of a pack of playing cards from her drawer. It was black, except for a single, red switch on the side. Grace motioned to the commander to cover his eyes. He frowned but did as told. She flicked the switch and a bright flash of light showered the room, followed by fizzy, popping sounds.

  Sett peered through the crevices of his fingers and saw three wispy strands of smoke ascend in different parts of the room.

  “Someone takes an inordinate amount of interest in my office,” Grace explained.

  “And I thought it was just mine,” Sett smirked.

  “Nope. Now, what is on your mind, Commander?”

  “Volk,” he said. “Volk is on my mind.”

  “You two not getting along, I take it?”

  “Cut the crap, Celestial. Something’s not right with that guy, and I want to know what it is.”

  “Is he ill?”

  “No, lady, cupids don’t get ill. They also don’t hover in the air, manifest whirlwinds, or fly.”

  “Oh, that…”

  “Exactly,” Sett said. “You seem to have your pretty nose in lots of things around here, and I want to know what the hell it is I’m smelling.”

  “Why not just ask the captain yourself?”

  “I did, and all I got was gibberish wrapped in stinkweed.”

  “It’s enough to get the captain to speak at all,” Grace said, “but when he does, the few words he’ll mutter are never gibberish. What did he say?”

  Sett leaned in. “What do you know about angels?”

  “Same as you, I suppose,” Grace replied guardedly.

  “Don’t be coy with me, Celestial. Volk not only believes in angels, he believes he’s an angel. He even said that I’m one too, but that I’m too dense to know it.”

  “Maybe you are. Maybe we all are.”

  “Good,” Sett said. “Now we’re getting somewhere.”

  Grace noticed Sett’s expression was absent of the usual mockery. His seriousness was not born from anger; if anything, it was puzzlement.

  He continued. “I want to know if you witnessed any of the things I mentioned.”

  “No.”

  Sett stood up with an air of finality. “Then those bastards were playing me.”

  Grace raised her hand and then slowly lowered it, insisting that he sit back down.

  “Not those things,” she said. “Other, more amazing things.”

  Sett sat. He squinted at Grace. “Like what?”

  “Isn’t it how that you are really interested in, Commander?”

  “Fine, lady, I’ll play it your way. Keep talking.”

  “What do you know about history, Commander?”<
br />
  “I know that it is written by the victors.”

  “Perhaps that is so,” Grace said. “At the Academy. But, for Captain Volk, history never dies. It is alive, it is sacred, and contained within it is the present and the future. According to Volk, he, you, me—all of us here—belong to a time forgotten, but still very much at hand.”

  “And I’m supposed to believe that once upon a fabled time we were all angels, is that it?” Sett scoffed.

  “Were and still are,” Grace replied. “According to Volk, we are divine beings, and with the exploration of our divinity we are able to regain knowledge and powers that were once second nature to us.”

  “Divine beings serving who?”

  “The Master of the Universe—God.”

  “Bullcrap.”

  Grace shrugged. “You said that you wanted to know how he does what he does, and I’m telling you what he says. Haven’t you ever wondered why you rarely saw Captains Cyrus or Volk at the Academy, yet everyone knows they are great cupid warriors? How did they get that way? How did they learn what they know? Did you teach them, Commander? Did your instructors teach them?”

  Sett palmed his beard. “I always figured they had studied with some of the old commanders from before the Civil War, and that they just happened to be a little more talented than most.”

  “They studied all right, but not with any Academy commanders. They learned in secret, underground schools, under the instruction of great sages long thought dead, and they studied history. Real history. They studied the ways of angels.”

  “Have you seen such a place, Celestial?”

  “I have.”

  “Show it to me,” he demanded.

  “I can’t. I don’t know where it is or how I got there. It was kept secret from me. But it is real, and it is like nothing you have ever seen.”

  “Why are they letting the cat out of the bag now? How does Volk know that I won’t report him and his friends to the judges, and you too, Celestial?”

  “Because time is about up; history nearly over. The future is blinking out. I needn’t remind you how dire our situation is, do I?”