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

by Benjamin Laskin

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Gideon stepped behind Rosso, grabbed a fistful of his bushy white hair, yanked back his head, and placed the needle threateningly at the old man’s jugular.

  “No one will find you back here until your filthy carcass stinks up the whole building.”

  Rosso swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple rising and falling. A greasy sheen of sweat covered his forehead. But then he seemed to draw on some newfound conviction.

  He stated bluntly, and with contempt, “These ‘righteous’ of whom you speak, these so-called ‘Lamed-Vavniks,’ they do not exist.”

  Gideon released Rosso’s hair and sat down on a box in front of him. “Continue,” he said.

  “It is a myth,” Rosso said. “It is not the erasure of the individuals that I’m interested in, but the myth. As long as the world believes in the myth that a few good people can make a difference, we will never progress as a species. As Rousseau said, ‘Man is born free and everywhere he is in chains.’ These chains are composed of an amalgam of beliefs—belief in God, in a soul, in individual salvation, and that such nonsense could possibly matter to an uncaring universe.“

  Rosso glanced at the two men, expecting expressions of shock or contempt, or maybe even pity. But the men’s faces were impassive, their thoughts inscrutable.

  “There is nothing ‘good’ or ‘righteous’ about such persons,” Rosso continued. “It is the great deception. A stroll through the lunatic asylum called society proves that there is something deeply wrong with humankind. Faith in a fictitious God, and the belief that we can ascend some moral ladder constructed from superstition and fairy tales only prolongs our torment.

  “I have spent half of my life and a great deal of my fortune fighting for a better, more rational society. But no matter how many people my friends and I convinced of our cause, the social justice and collective salvation that we called for evaded us.

  “I was instrumental in the disintegration of every phony, fatuous democracy in the world, and yet the myth remained. The predominant obstacle to a new world order was the United States. It took decades of patience and hard work, but I and those before me finally broke the pigheaded country, financially and socially, figuratively and literally. Unfortunately, like the equally mythological Hydra, in its place sprang these damn Federations and Leagues. It was infuriating. I had to ask myself, how could this be?

  “Then one day in my reading, I stumbled across an obscure reference. It was oddly familiar, but I couldn’t place where I had seen or heard it before. It was a ludicrous fable about these so-called Lamed-Vavniks that you mentioned. Frankly, I’m astonished you should even know of such a thing, to say nothing about managing to tie me to their extirpation. The myth is absurd, as I say, but all myths have their roots, and so nevertheless it got me thinking.

  “I concluded that the myth would continue as long as people believed that shining examples of the myth still abounded; anonymous simpletons living exemplary lives whose daily interactions caused people to pause and consider.

  “There are no Lamed-Vavniks. There are no saints. But there are ignoramuses who, despite all rationality, stubbornly cling to a delusional code of conduct that embraces the myth. They are moral mutants, atavistic throwbacks, and their progress-crushing ‘goodness’ is insidious. They cause others to second guess what I and centuries of forward-thinking individuals know is best for them.”

  “You know?” Gideon said.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” Rosso answered with a smirk. “I’ve heard it before. Yes, it’s considered a disease of sorts to think of yourself as something of a god, the creator of empires and mass movements, but since I began to live it out I’m comfortable with it.”

  Gideon studied Rosso’s dusty-blue eyes as he spoke, trying to peer into the man’s murky soul.

  Rosso smiled smugly and opened his eyes wide. “Careful, young man. Don’t you know that if you gaze too long into the abyss, the abyss will gaze into you?” He snorted and returned to answering Gideon’s question. “Yes, ‘know.’ If I didn’t know, how could I have become one of the richest, most powerful men in the world?”

  “Might makes right, right?” Gideon said.

  “In the real world, it certainly does.”

  “And yet, here sits mighty Alexander Rosso strapped to a chair in his own office.”

  Rosso smirked. “Yes, well, all this means is that I need to fire my security team and replace it with a better one. In fact, young man—er, ‘Gabe’—another truism I hold is that every crisis is an opportunity, and you never want to let a good one go to waste. You and your friend here have demonstrated that you are resourceful men of unique cleverness and courage. I could make it worth your while to head a new security team.”

  Gideon turned to Cyrus, who was rummaging through the boxes in the room. He had already lifted a few folders and stacked them on the floor.

  “Hear that, Mike? Mr. Rosso here is offering us a job. What do you think?”

  “How’s the benefit package?” Cyrus asked, examining a file.

  “Very generous, I assure you,” Rosso answered.

  “What about the Lamed-Vavniks? Will he call off his dogs and leave them be?”

  Gideon turned to Rosso. “Well?”

  “I am not the only one who thinks this way. You give me far too much credit.”

  “He didn’t answer my question,” Cyrus said.

  “You didn’t answer his question,” Gideon repeated.

  “I’m sure that with a little persuasion on my part we could shelve the project.”

  “Who are these others?” Gideon asked.

  “No one you know. They keep an even lower profile than I do.”

  “No need,” Cyrus said, ripping some pages from a ringed binder. “I have their names right here. They don’t know of Mr. Rosso’s side project in eugenics and the culling of the herd, but they are all on his payroll and supportive of the big picture.”

  As soon as Cyrus had seen their names and phone numbers, their Midrashic records opened up before him, each person’s face and highlights from their lives flashing before his eyes. All the individuals on the page were covered under the six degrees of separation.

  Cyrus waved the sheets of paper. “Not so low profile as he’d have us believe.” He read aloud from the list of Rosso’s associates. “Let’s see, within just the NPF we got every ex-NPF President, twelve sitting senators, eighteen prominent congressmen, nine senior CIA officials, twelve top officers in the FBI, NSA, and Homeland Security, everyone with a crease in their pants, skirt, or pantsuit in the State Department, the EPA, and…well, just about every other federal agency.”

  He skipped to another page. “Looking abroad, we have more than sixty influential European statesmen, ex-heads of MI5, every past Secretary-General of the UN, and the heads of thirty-three different UN agencies. We have two…four…over six dozen major industrialists and bankers, as well as the owners and top broadcasters of every major TV news network in the world, and, well, about a hundred other leading globalists and One Worlders of one pinstripe or another, including those in the fields of sports, entertainment, etc.

  “Moving to other areas of influence,” Cyrus said, waving another neatly printed sheet. “We have a host of European generals, a kaleidoscope of Russian, Chinese, and Central and South American Marxists, and rounding out this multi-cultural medley of megalomania, a plethora of Saudi sheiks and notorious imams and mullahs.”

  Cyrus folded the pages and stuffed them into a pocket of his duster coat. “Whew,” he whistled. “Mr. Rosso, that’s quite an outfit you got there. Is it tough meeting payroll every month?”

  Rosso smirked but said nothing.

  “How long did it take to insert so many people into so many high places?” Gideon asked.

  “Like I said, it began long before me. I wasn’t the first, just the best.” Rosso grinned, obviously pleased with himself. “But about a hundred years now. We had some setbacks alon
g the way, but even when we lost ground here or there, we were still always gaining it in the most important area.”

  “And what would that be?”

  Rosso smiled as if he was about to give Gideon a wonderful gift. “But of course, that in which we marinate morning to night, day after day. That which is all-pervasive. That which informs our every word and deed, thought and principle.

  “The culture, my friend,” he said, as if his revelation was evidence of his genius. “The culture. Everything flows downstream from culture, and nothing more so than politics. Control the culture, and with relentless nudging you can herd an entire country in a new direction within a generation. You can persuade them to accept things at the end of a generation that were considered inconceivable at its start.

  “With the invention of the Internet and social media,” he said with a grin, “we don’t even need a generation. We can accomplish in a decade what used to take three. Think of the peer pressure a kid feels at school. Powerful stuff, wouldn’t you agree? Turn the country into a giant high school—a nation of adolescents—and just apply the same kind of pressure. It really is that simple.”

  “So, with all that cultural clout,” Gideon said, “all that peer pressure, what the hell is taking your glorious utopia so long to manifest? Look around, Alex. We’re a lot closer to dystopia than utopia.”

  “Did you not hear a word I’ve been saying?” Rosso growled. “The myth. The damn myth! And dolts like you who continue to cleave to it. After all, that’s what brought you here, is it not?”

  “No,” Gideon said. “Something much more personal.” He turned to Cyrus. “Were any of those people you mentioned in on the plot to kill the Lamed-Vavniks?”

  “Specifically the Lamed-Vavniks, none,” Cyrus answered. “They aren’t aware of the story. They are basically bigots and ideologues enthralled with the idea of silencing any and all opposition to their new world order. The people on this list are all committed globalists of one totalitarian stripe or another—Marxist, socialist, corporatist, Islamist. Some strange bedfellows to be sure, but that is nothing new. In the short term, they all believe that they can advance their agenda, and that is all that matters to them.”

  Rosso’s eyes widened. “There is no such thing written there,” he protested. “It’s just an innocent list of names—friends, associates, business partners, and other philanthropists like myself. Distinguished, highly esteemed and trusted luminaries of society, every one of them.”

  “Just a list of names to you or me,” Gideon said. “But Mike there has a gift. Every name tells a story.”

  “Rubbish,” Rosso said. “There is no way you could determine such a thing. You are working for someone. Tell me, is it those SLA fascists? Or those Nazis in the SFF or MIL?”

  He stared at Gideon’s poker face and read nothing. Rosso squinted and shifted his jaw in thought, and then he smirked.

  “No,” he said, “it has to be the Israelis. I can’t believe we didn’t finish those bastards off when we had the chance. Ever since that son of a bitch Ben-Yosef came to power he has been fucking with me.”

  “Sorry, Alex,” Gideon said, “but it’s just me and Mike.” He turned to Cyrus. “Do you have what we need?”

  Cyrus nodded and stuffed a short stack of papers he had confiscated into the lining of his duster coat. “I will need a little time to connect the dots and carry out some mental reconnaissance, but we’re good.”

  “‘Mental reconnaissance?’” Rosso said mockingly. “Are you trying to tell me he’s psychic or something?”

  “Or something,” Gideon said.

  Cyrus brushed aside the window curtain and contemplated the trees, bushes, and green common below. Rain thrashed at the window, and then came a blinding flash of light followed by a crack of thunder—boom! A harpoon of lighting slammed into the gazebo, setting it ablaze.

  Cyrus turned to Gideon. “It has begun. We have to get going.”

  “Begun?” Gideon said.

  “Mr. Rosso,” Cyrus said. “A lightning bolt just turned your gazebo into a giant tiki torch. It looks like we have no more need of you.”

  “What does that mean?” Rosso said warily. “I-I told you what you wanted to know.”

  “You have,” Gideon said. “You’ve confirmed what I have always suspected—that you are a malignant narcissist and a depraved egomaniac. A nice combo you got there, Alex. So, yes, thank you for that.”

  Gideon jabbed the hypo into Rosso’s leg and injected him with the colorless liquid. Rosso squirmed and kicked, but Gideon trapped the old man’s feet between his own, and emptied the syringe, a potent, but harmless sedative. Rosso, however, didn’t know that.

  “No! No! It can’t end this way!” Rosso cried. “I’m not finished. I have work to do!”

  “You’ve done far too much already, you murdering whack-job. You killed my grandfather and a friend of mine.”

  “So that’s what this is about? The death of two nobodies?” He was appalled.

  “Every nobody is a somebody to someone, pal.”

  Rosso squirmed. Spit dribbled from his lips, his eyes rolled into his head, and his chin dropped to his chest.

  Gideon slapped the tape back around Rosso’s mouth and gave his office chair a shove with his foot, sending the billionaire rolling to the back of the room.

  Rosso’s phone rang, its ringtone Richard Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyrie. Cyrus, who was busy picking the lock on Rosso’s safe, reached into the pocket of his duster where Gideon had earlier dropped it, cleared his throat and answered the phone.

  “I’m coming,” he said, impersonating Rosso perfectly. “Give me ten more minutes.”

  Gideon peered into Rosso’s office through the two-way mirror and saw three armed men burst in. One of them was talking on a phone. They searched the office, looking under the desk and ransacking through the closet. Mystified, they shrugged.

  Gideon signaled to Cyrus that the man he was talking to was on the other side of the bookcase.

  “Mr. Rosso,” they heard the security guard say into his phone. “Sir, where are you?”

  Cyrus hung up and swiped at the wall, switching off the lights.

  “Mr. Rosso, sir?” the man repeated. “Shit. What the hell is going on?” He hit redial.

  Before Gideon could warn Cyrus to shut down Rosso’s phone, the Ride of the Valkyrie blasted again.

  25

  Demon Hunters

  “Die, old man,” Phorcus said, pulling the trigger on the spleen gun.

  Nothing happened.

  Sett grinned. He remembered Hermes saying that the spleen gun required twenty seconds to properly heat the toxin’s molecules in the chamber, and that a flashing light would run up and down the barrel of the gun registering what stage it was in, going from white, to blue, to red, and finally green for go. It was flashing blue.

  Lieutenant Phorcus pulled the trigger again. “The hell?”

  “That’s right, pal,” Sett said. “Send me an email.”

  He swiftly closed the gap between them and ran Phorcus through with his sword. Phorcus crumpled to the ground, the gun hitting the cement floor. A shot rang out.

  Possessing impeccably poor timing, the Anteros soldier that Sett had shot earlier in the hip with an arrow, and which was still in him, burst limping into the barracks. Phorcus’s spleen round struck the hapless soldier in the ankle.

  The soldier yelped. He looked down in horror as his leg began to dissolve before his eyes. With one last attempt at heroics, he aimed his demon duster at Sett and fired just as his leg buckled beneath him. The shot whizzed over Sett’s head. The soldier rolled in agony on the ground as the spleen toxin crept up his leg.

  Sett stepped on the soldier’s wrist with his boot, took away his gun, and left the dying man crying for help. Then, overcome with compassion, he turned and fired one shot into the terrified soldier’s forehead, putting him out of his misery.

  Sett turned his attention to Hamanaeus. He had seen Phorcus shove him into a ro
om for cover before he faced the commander. Sett entered stealthily in pursuit.

  He found an empty barracks lined with beds. Sett knelt and scanned beneath the bunks. Clear. He checked the windows. Locked from the inside, Hamanaeus couldn’t have escaped that way. With the room empty and with nowhere to hide, Sett figured that there had to be a trap door that led into the tunnels that he knew ran throughout the compound.

  Moving down the center aisle of the room Sett noticed a rumpled throw rug. He flung it away and saw the hatch. Gun at the ready, he yanked up on the hatch’s iron ring and threw open the lid to the tunnel. Musty yetzer stink met his nostrils. He peered inside the passageway. Although dimly lit, he saw a floor ten feet below.

  Down he dropped, landing in a crouch and quickly rolling away in case Hamanaeus or a yetzer were waiting for him. Sett sprang back up, gun at the ready. Clear. The tunnel dead-ended at the barracks. There was only one way to proceed.

  Outside, at the other end of the Anteros compound, the battle raged on.

  Three recruits had been wounded. Private Typhon and Cadet Ares had both been winged by Anteros splicer fire. Luckily, their injuries did not put them out of commission. Corporal Orion of Abishai’s SWAT team, however, was in much worse shape, having taken a round in the back from an Anteros marksman riding a flying Vengeance Yetzer. Sergeant Major Balius picked him up and hustled him towards the gazebo. He ordered the huddled judges beneath it to drag Orion inside.

  The trained yetzers were proving particularly threatening. It took more than a few blasts from a splicer rifle or demon duster to put those beasts down, unless the blast was exact and hit the yetzers where they were most vulnerable. And as every species of yetzer was different, those spots were rarely the same.

  The massive, lumbering Grudge and toad-like Victim Yetzers with their riders were bad enough, but the flying Vengeance Yetzers were especially dangerous, as the angel soldiers below couldn’t keep their eyes on both land and air at the same time. There were six of them flying above, and they were making things very difficult for the angels.