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

by Benjamin Laskin

  “What is your way, Commander? You haven’t one, have you? You are lost and confused. You say you are here to follow orders, and that is true. But the orders you follow make no sense to you. They bring you no joy, no peace, and no fulfillment because they are not coming from our Holy Father. You witnessed with your own eyes what a lad with simple faith can do.

  “Kohai serves God,” she continued. “You serve idols. He fights in the name of the Lord of Hosts; you fight in the name of Sett. He draws strength and courage from the Holy Spirit. You draw yours from a whiskey bottle!”

  Sett didn’t reply. Instead, he moved to the gap where the door once stood. “I’ll send over a new door,” he said.

  Grace watched him start away and then stop as he put a finger behind his ear to tap his transceiver.

  “Sett,” he said. “…What? … When? … Call a forensics team. I’ll be right over.”

  “What is it, Commander?” Grace asked, concerned.

  “Judge Laban. He’s dead.”

  “Dead?”

  “Hung himself.”

  Grace’s hand flew to her mouth. “But why would… Did he leave a note?”

  “Under an empty vodka bottle, apparently. I’ll update you after I have more details. Good evening, Madam.”

  22

  Cruel World

  Judge Laban lived in a small cottage on a lake a short stroll from the Academy’s campus. The other judges chose to live in mansions with a dozen servants. It wasn’t that Laban saw a virtue in simplicity. He was just too curmudgeonly to put up with having others around him. Judge Laban disliked his fellow cupids as much as he disliked humans. He endured both only because he hated yetzers the most of all.

  Commandos, cadets, Academy staff and bureaucrats feared him—they didn’t even like to pronounce his name. Old as dirt, Laban knew things; things long forgotten by those around him. It was rumored that he was something of a black magician, though no one had any evidence that he had ever used such powers. It was his great age that fostered the belief. After all, the thinking went, how else could he have lived so long without possessing some occult powers? True or false, Judge Laban enjoyed shrewdly using his reputation to his political advantage.

  After the great Civil War, there was a short-lived power struggle between Laban and Minos, but the younger, more charismatic Minos won out. Laban’s grating personality had gained him few followers. Nonetheless, he swallowed his pride and acquiesced to the decision.

  The two judges actually got along quite well over the coming centuries. Judge Laban tended to be Minos’s go-to judge in tight decisions. It was only with the start of the Solow process that the two judicial giants began to diverge. Even then, after being allowed to express his reservations, Laban continued to give his much-needed, albeit, unenthusiastic nod to proceed. Judges Pelops and Busiris wondered if the old stinker wasn’t getting a little soft in his old age.

  When Commander Sett arrived at Judge Laban’s home, a forensic crew was already scouring the cottage. The same SWAT team that he had curtly dismissed less than an hour earlier was keeping an eye on the surroundings.

  Sett entered the home and was met with a salute from the SWAT team leader, Captain Abishai.

  Sett saluted back. “Abs, about that dressing down I gave you earlier. No hard feelings, okay? You boys did good.”

  Abishai knew Sett’s words were meant as an apology, and Sett knew that Abishai’s nod was his acceptance of it. The two were old friends. Both men enjoyed their Scotch, and together over it, the only heart-to-heart conversations either old timer ever had. They had fought side by side in the Civil War, and had carried out more missions together down on Earth than either could remember.

  Abishai’s name was a holdover from the old days. Whereas most cupids took on Greek or Roman names, no one, including Abishai himself, knew how or where his name came from.

  The captain had a vague, boyhood memory of having been told that it once belonged to a mighty warrior of a bygone day; that Abishai had been one of thirty mighty men of valor, called the gibborim. But Academy archives recorded no such warriors because both the name and the gibborim were from the Bible. Abishai was one of King David’s most trusted generals. In any case, the name stuck and he gave it no thought.

  “What do we got here?” Sett asked as they entered the judge’s study.

  “Looks like the old coot hung himself all right,” Abishai replied.

  Sett walked over to the body, which was covered in a white sheet. He bent down, pulled back the sheet, and noted the rope marks around Judge Laban’s neck.

  “The geezer looks the same dead as he did alive,” Sett remarked.

  He turned to the forensic scientist, Dr. Aristaeus, a short, red-faced and pudgy cupid with a clipboard in his hands.

  “I want the rope examined. I want to know where it came from, how it was tied, and checked for fingerprints, DNA, or any thing else.”

  “Yes, Sir,” the doctor said. He jotted a note onto his clipboard.

  “Play it back for me, Doc?”

  “Yes, Sir,” Aristaeus said, glad to be of assistance to someone as renowned as Commander Sett. He walked Sett around the library as he described what happened.

  “We believe he sat at his desk and composed his suicide note, as we found indentations of some of the words in the desk pad. The empty vodka bottle and glass were here.” He pointed to two sets of rings on a blank piece of paper. “Apparently, he liked his vodka chilled. You can see the telltale signs of condensation on the paper he used as a coaster. We’re checking the bottle and glass for prints.”

  “Did you check his alcohol levels yet?”

  “Tests show that he may have downed the entire bottle.”

  Sett nodded. Or was forced to. “Go on.”

  “It’s pretty simple. At about 5:18 p.m. he threw the rope over the wooden crossbeam above, secured it, slid his wheeled desk chair underneath, put the rope around his neck, and kicked away the chair. You can see it rolled across the room to that window. Burn marks and laceration around his neck show he struggled for a minute or so. The neck didn’t break. He died of asphyxiation, which is why he didn’t turn to goop yet.”

  “Thank you, Doctor,” Sett said. “Can I see the note?”

  The doctor showed him the note in a plastic bag.

  Sett read it aloud: “‘Goodbye cruel world. See you bastards in Hell.’” He handed it back to Dr. Aristaeus. “You’re kidding me.”

  Aristaeus shrugged. “It matches the indentations on the pad. And,” he opened a cabinet revealing a large collection of obsolete, 20th century DVDs, “he liked old American movies.”

  Abishai said, “Well, he was blind drunk, and a grouchy old codger to boot. Maybe it was just his way of flipping us the bird.”

  “Put a handwriting expert on it,” Sett told Aristaeus, unconvinced.

  “Yes, Sir.” Aristaeus jotted the word ‘graphologist’ onto his clipboard.

  Sett made another pass through the judge’s study and then through the house. “Any signs of forced entry?” he asked Abishai.

  “All clean,” the captain replied.

  Sett exited the home to the front porch. Abishai followed him out.

  “What do you think?” Abishai asked.

  “Dunno,” Sett said, pulling a cigar from his pocket and lighting it. “We’ve never had a judge die on us before.”

  “I wonder who’ll replace him.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Sett replied. “Those types are all the same. Minos will appoint some candy ass toady to take his place.”

  “Why’d he do it, you think?”

  “I’m not so sure he did, Abs.”

  “Murder?” Abishai said, appalled at the thought. “Here? A judge? Why?”

  Sett blew a smoke ring. “Why not here? You know as well as I do what kind of crap goes on up here behind closed doors. We’re a sorry lot of turds. Think back to our youth, Abs, to just before the big war. Did we have the kind of drunks and druggies we got today? Did w
e spend our nights chasing celestial skirt and bar brawling?”

  “Some,” Abishai admitted.

  “Some,” Sett agreed, “but at least back then it carried a little shame with it. Today, we wear our depravity on our chests like some sort of frickin’ medal.”

  Abishai patted his old pal on the back. “Your age is showing, Sett. Every generation talks this way about the next. ‘The youth today,’” he parroted, “‘they’re no damn good.’”

  “No, Abs. I don’t blame them. They don’t know any better. It’s all of us. The whole stinking system. We’ve lost…something. We’ve got no sense of shame, no sense of purpose, no sense of who we are…or maybe…were. Once. A long, long time ago.”

  “Whoa, Sett, this is the sort of talk that requires that bottle of hundred-year-old Scotch of yours.”

  “You’re right,” Sett said. He slapped Abishai on the shoulder. “Drop by my place this evening. I’ll crack that bottle. It’s been a while.”

  “Roger that!” Abishai said gladly. He scratched his beard. “You know, if you’re right about this not being a case of a miserable old fart offing himself, it begs the question—who’d have the kind of balls needed to murder a judge?”

  Sett blew another smoke ring and then turned his gaze contemplatively to the porch’s wooden deck. “I have no—”

  The commander stopped and bent lower, looking at something that caught his eye on the sidewalk a few feet away. He walked the two steps down from the porch to the sidewalk, and squatted onto his haunches.

  Curious, Captain Abishai joined him.

  Sett said, “That bottle of Scotch may have to sit on my shelf for another day, Abs. Call Aristaeus over here.”

  Abishai looked behind, spotted Dr. Aristaeus through the doorway, and whistled to him.

  He squatted along side Commander Sett. “It’s just some guy’s spit.”

  “Tobacco spittle,” Sett corrected, standing back up. “You asked what kind of balls it would take? The kind with no brains attached.”

  23

  Turkish Delight

  As Chief Celestial, one of Grace’s many jobs was also playing den mother to the host of celestials that lived and worked in our sector of Heaven. Celestials performed many roles, most of which were geared to keeping cupids and the Academy happy. In past centuries, however, doing so didn’t carry today’s depraved connotations.

  Celestials had their own Academy, from which Grace herself had graduated with top honors. Until more recent times, celestials were treated with the same honor and respect as a cupid warrior. Celestials were esteemed doctors and nurses, seamstresses and secretaries, lawyers and bureaucrats, chefs, musicians and clinicians. Many had earned medals for their accomplishments in different areas, including for demonstrating great courage on the front lines as field doctors and nurses and logistic experts.

  Things began to gradually change even before the Civil War, but afterwards, the alterations became pervasive, and then institutionalized. The reforms initiated by the Cupid Academy—in the name of Eros—had a deleterious effect on the celestials. Instead of being perceived as angelic equals to the cupids, the changes resulted in the stripping of the celestials’ sense of purpose and worth.

  Like the cupids, they no longer served to glorify God. They were taught to serve the Academy, and to help forward its progressive reforms. Modesty was no longer the virtue it had once been considered. Their skirts became shorter, their blouses lower, their midriffs exposed, and their cosmetics copious. Even the language of the celestials changed, both body and spoken. They became raunchier and as foul-mouthed as any cupid soldier. In time, though a number of celestials still held important posts, for most their stature had diminished to something between geisha and community courtesan.

  Grace rose through the ranks by her wits and a bewitching charm that dazzled all who met her. She knew how to use her celestial wiles to get what she wanted, yet always did so without compromising her innate integrity.

  That, however, didn’t stop the gossip mill from churning. Many a high-ranking cupid sought to seduce the awesome beauty, and in their failure, turned to vengeance by disseminating salacious rumors about her. She knew better than to challenge these superiors, and so kept her silence. She may have lacked a sense of purpose to her life, but she had goals, and to reach them she understood that keeping her mouth shut was essential to achieving them.

  Now she was the highest-ranking celestial in Heaven. She had clout and she had means. She was not vindictive, but she could be ‘naughty.’ Some of her worse malefactors suddenly found themselves in frustrating, bureaucratic entanglements, or embarrassing, even compromising situations. This she did with mirth and originality. Gifted with patience and discernment, she carried out her pranks from a safe distance.

  Until Grace met Captains Cyrus and Volk, she never really considered herself different from the other celestials, just a little cleverer and harder working. She never questioned her identity, or what was expected from her. She was neither happy nor sad. She was, at best, stoically indifferent. The captains changed that.

  Although she pretended otherwise, Grace found the captains amusing, and enjoyed their playful banter and lighthearted, yet intelligent approach to matters. Whenever she was around one of them, she sensed a glow and warmth that no other cupids exuded. They were mysterious fellows.

  Grace knew that all cupids held humankind with contempt, though that didn’t stop them from hypocritically mimicking nearly everything they did. Cyrus and Volk did neither. The two quirky captains seemed to hold the humans with something closer to reverential awe, as if they actually envied the mortals—or something about them, anyway. Their attitude struck Grace as both curious and thought-provoking. What did the captains see in the losers that she and others could not?

  But it was Volk in particular who attracted her attention. Cyrus was handsome and heroic to be sure—smart and witty, too—but there had always seemed something remote about him, she thought, detached, even ethereal.

  Volk shared many of Cyrus’s best qualities, and his courage and accomplishments were equally legendary, yet he possessed an earthiness that drew her in. He seemed to really care about her; not just Grace the hot celestial, but Grace the soul. At first, she held his sincerity suspect—he was a cupid, after all—but as she got to know him better, she realized that his concern for her was genuine.

  This proved less comforting than she thought it would. It was easy to live up to the expectations of Academy cupids, but impossible to live up to Captain Volk’s! What was this ‘calling’ he hinted at? This greater purpose? This soul? She wanted nothing to do with that.

  And yet, she had to admit that when she looked around, Captains Cyrus and Volk were the only two cupids that seemed not only contented, but also joyous. Again, what did they know that she and everyone else didn’t?

  But that was all history now. Now she knew. She understood.

  What Sett had told Grace about Heaven’s underbelly disturbed her. As soon as he left her office, she went to the Academy archives to do a little research.

  Grace was not a prude, but she had been out of the loop for a long time. She had been busy building her career. She knew that her environs was far from decorous, suspected the worst, but ignored it. Upon taking up her new post as Chief Celestial, she decided that as long as her gals showed up for work and did their jobs, she would give their private lives a wide berth.

  But her liberal policy proved idealistic. Her gals were messing up all the time. A good portion of her day was spent handling the personal problems of celestials, which ranged from alcohol and drug abuse to internecine squabbles over cupid boyfriends.

  To her astonishment, Grace learned in her archival research that once upon a time, such things as she was dealing with now were almost unheard of. She had to go back, way back, centuries before the Civil War, and dig deep into the Academy archives to get a picture of life back then, but what she found had almost as big an impact on her as anything Captain Volk had to
ld her or shown her.

  Indeed, in what today seemed like a fabled past, celestials were the cheeriest of beings. Although Academy archivists had heavily censored all the documents that she had uncovered, one thing was certain: celestials had not always been a bunch of lushes, drug fiends, and floozies. Nor were cupids the uncouth, shiftless riffraff she now saw dancing before her in some sort of drunken Dionysian free-for-all at the Astarte Night Club.

  The Astarte Night Club was the most popular of the cupid bars; the grog shop of preference for cupids returning from the field, or looking for a place to blow off steam and hit on devilishly hot celestials. The music was always loud, often live, and whatever was most popular at the time among the humans they so disdained.

  The club was large and modeled after the more successful ones found on Earth. The central bar, spacious enough for a band, had dozens of tables, a long bar, and room to dance. Off to the right, near the back of the main bar and through a wide hallway, was a game room with eight pool tables and an assortment of computer games, as well as another long bar.

  To the left of the central barroom and entered through a soundproof sliding door, a cupid could find a more intimate setting. Furnished with plush chairs and sofas, the section boasted a Middle-Eastern harem theme. For those who really wanted to get into the mood, behind diaphanous curtains was an area of overstuffed pillows, Turkish rugs, and hookahs, oriental water pipes.

  Grace entered the club and was walloped by ear-scorching, brain-numbing music, and a dizzying laser light show. She was dressed professionally and modestly, as had become her way, and knew it made her stand out like a schoolmarm at a Berlin rave.

  “Good grief,” she said to herself. Before her a horde of strapping, shirtless cupids and scantily clad celestials danced and gyrated like they were auditioning for invites to Caligula’s bachelor party.

  Grace wound her way through the twisting torsos to the bar, her fanny having received more than a few love taps along the way. She sat on a stool and observed the spectacle, looking to see if she recognized any faces.