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

by Benjamin Laskin

  Grace jumped behind the spleen gun and grasped the handles. She swiveled the weapon towards the west and searched for the fluorescent markings through the gun’s scope. “I can’t find them.”

  “They are crawling between the hedge and the Administration building. See them?”

  Grace located the hedge and followed it along the side of the building. She spotted the squad as they were about to turn the corner out of view.

  “I see them,” she said, taking aim. She fired off three quick pulses. The soldiers leaped from behind the hedge as if on fire, running and patting at themselves. They didn’t get far before they turned to cinders. Two of the soldiers managed to turn the corner unscathed, including one with an RPG.

  “Styx,” Jason barked. “How much longer?”

  “Almost there,” Styx hollered back, yanking a chair out from the tangled barbed wire barricade and throwing it to the side.

  Jason perked up his ears. From behind he heard the blasting of some strange sounding trumpet. He turned to the direction of the wailing horn, and cursed.

  He called to Commando Deimos. “Deimos, what the hell is going on back there?”

  Deimos looked. He saw soldiers breaking ranks and running as if giving chase, firing as they went.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe a squad of cupid cadets are attacking us from behind.”

  “Well, go check it out. Tell the fools to forget about ‘em. We’re about to break through. Whoever it is will have to follow us in. We’ll make two button hooks and seal them off, and then they’re toast.”

  “Roger that.” Deimos took off running.

  When he sprinted past the first rows of troops awaiting orders to advance, he saw that behind them half his army was in disarray, running about and ducking for cover. Then he came upon one after another of his fellow soldiers lying dead in the grass, arrows in their chests or backs. Arrows? You’ve got to be kidding…

  Deimos took cover behind a low wall where another soldier crouched. “Soldier,” he said. “What the hell is going on?”

  “We’re being attack from behind!”

  “I can see that, you idiot. But where are they?”

  “I don’t know. We can’t see them!”

  “Whattaya mean we can’t see them? It’s nearly wide open. There’s no where for them to hide!”

  “I know that, Sir. But they seem to be everywhere!”

  Deimos peered over the wall, just in time to see another soldier drop to his knees, an arrow in his chest. It appeared to have come from…above? He looked up, but all he saw was blue skies and a few puffy clouds.

  30

  Leap of Faith

  I stuffed the shofar, or ram’s horn, back into my belt and fired off a dozen arrows in rapid succession.

  I couldn’t fight while cloaked, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t shoot. Academy weapons would not cloak along with me, but my wooden bows and arrows and other ancient weapons from the yeshiva did. I couldn’t fly and shoot at the same time, but as long as I was stationary I could fire off arrows.

  And so I flew to one spot, paused, let fly a clutch of arrows, and then jettisoned to another spot, and did the same. Sometimes I shot from above, other times I was on the ground right in the middle of them. To the Anteros soldiers, it was as if they were being fired upon from all directions. To put the fear of God in them, I blasted my shofar.

  The soldiers panicked and fired indiscriminately, dropping their own men right and left. Then, suddenly, the soldiers quit fighting what they couldn’t see and turned and ran towards the front. The barricade had been breached.

  “Madam Grace! They’ve broken through!”

  No longer worried about melting the barricade, Grace turned the spleen gun on the rampaging soldiers. She squeezed the trigger, but only got off two discharges before the gun ran dry.

  “I’m out,” Grace said. “There is nothing more we can do from here.”

  “So, what do we do?” Hera asked, frightened.

  A shoulder-launched photon rocket blasted the tower. The explosion blew Grace and Hera from their feet. If it weren’t for the lead shield along the wall they’d have surely died.

  “Madam Grace!” Hera called out, crawling over to her. She tossed away the rubble that had fallen on top of Grace. Hera lifted the celestial’s head and set it on her lap. Blood oozed from a gash across Grace’s brow. “Madam Grace, can you hear me?”

  Grace slowly came to. “Yes, Hera,” Grace said. “I-I think I’m okay.”

  Hera ripped off one of her sleeves and tied it around Grace’s head to stem the bleeding. “Can you stand? We have to get out of here!”

  “Help me up.”

  Hera put Grace’s arm around her neck and helped her to her feet. Grace grimaced in pain and almost buckled. “My ankle,” she winced.

  “We have to get out of here,” Hera repeated. “Someone is surely on their way. Can you whirl?”

  “No,” Grace said. “But you go, Hera. That’s an order.”

  “I won’t leave you!”

  “You must, my dear. If we survive this day, you must be around to train a new generation of celestials and bring them to the truth.”

  “But I don’t want to continue without you,” Hera whimpered. “I’d be so alone.”

  “Nonsense. Besides, there is someone else, someone to love.”

  Hera knew about whom Grace was speaking, but said nothing. She just bowed her head, overwhelmed with grief and confusion.

  “Virgil is good,” Grace said tenderly, lifting Hera’s chin. “He is righteous and good. You are young, my dearest, you have so much to learn and to do. Do not disappoint me. Hashem has chosen you as a part of the remnant. Your true work is yet to come.” Grace kissed Hera on the forehead. “Now go, please. Return to the yeshiva and wait there. There you will be safe. God willing, perhaps I will still see you there soon. Now run!”

  “There’s nowhere to go, Celestial,” came a menacing voice emerging from the stairwell. It belonged to Lieutenant Jason. “She’d have to get past me. And that ain’t gonna happen.” He was out of breath after having charged up the stairs to the top of the tower, but that didn’t stop him from flashing a lecherous smile. He pointed his splicer rifle at the two celestials. “I think you both need a spanking.”

  “Spin out, Hera!” Grace commanded. “Now!”

  “But I-I’ve never gone solo before!”

  “You can do it, Hera. Believe! You too are an angel of God. Have faith, Hera. It’s your only chance!”

  Hera took a final look at Grace, nodded resolutely, and then sprinted towards the edge of the tower. She dove corkscrewing through the air. Grace hobbled over to look and saw Hera’s whirling body vanish from sight just feet before she’d have smashed into the pavement below.

  “Well, that wasn’t very bright,” Jason said, sidling up next to Grace, locking his arm tightly around her. He peered over the edge. “Hmm,” he remarked, “you celestials sure goop fast. I don’t see a damn thing.” He turned back to Grace. “You and I have some unfinished business, Celestial.” He leered, and then spat a mouthful of brown tobacco swill at her feet.

  The cupid cadets inside the Academy rushed to impede the inflow, turning their fire on the invaders and unleashing their sole RPG and Gatling gun. Jason’s army fell back, stunned by the fierceness of the attack. But just as his soldiers retreated, both Perseus’s and Ajax’s forces breached their barricades. The Academy was being assaulted on all sides.

  “Virgil,” I called. “We’ve got to push them back!”

  “Roger that,” he said, knowing that it meant we’d have to go visible.

  We flew to the Academy, and hovering unnoticeably high, met up in the center.

  “Virge, you hit them while I give us cover.”

  “How are you going to do that?”

  I slipped on the pair of mirrored sunglasses that Captain Cyrus had awarded me. I handed a second pair to Virgil. “Quick, put these on.”

  I concentrated and brought
forth a blinding white light, sending it in all directions. To look at us would have been akin to staring at the sun. The soldiers below stopped in their tracks and covered their eyes.

  “Hey,” Virgil said. “How come you didn’t teach me that one?”

  “Hit ‘em!” I said.

  Virgil, a gold ring encircled by Cyrus’s jeweled sweat on each middle finger, thrust out his hands and conjured up two whirlwinds: one a pillar of fire, the other a pillar of night. He hurled the gathering clouds spiraling downwards, freaking the hell out of the Anteros soldiers.

  “Careful, Virge,” I said. “You don’t want to burn down the Academy.”

  “Under control, Kohai.”

  The pillars swept through the Academy grounds, Anteros soldiers fleeing before their paths. The fiery pillar was intimidating enough, but the pillar of night was actually the more fearsome. It wasn’t just black, it was inky, pitch black; dense, menacing, and suffocatingly sinister black; nightmare black, coffin black, deathly Stygian black. If hell could be simulated, I thought this would be it; darkness so complete, that no one and nothing could penetrate its isolation. Caught in it, even time seemed to stop. All senses were numbed but the terror of one’s deepest, most tenebrous thoughts of eternal nothingness.

  “Go to hell!” Grace said.

  “Nah,” Jason said. “I just got back from there. Been there, done that. Now I’m home for good.”

  He grabbed Grace’s arm and yanked her away from the wall, but because of her ankle she buckled and fell to the ground.

  “Don’t be difficult,” he scolded. “I haven’t much time. In case you haven’t noticed, we’re in the middle of a war here.”

  Jason dragged her across the rubble to a spot near the stairwell. He laid his rifle to the side and hopped on top of her, straddling her at the waist.

  Grace’s hand flew up and slapped him across the face.

  He grabbed her wrist. “I like that,” he said. Then he used her hand to slap himself twice more. “Stings so good.”

  “You’re deranged,” Grace said contemptuously.

  “And you’re fu—”

  Something astounding grabbed his eye. He looked up and squinted at a blinding, phosphorescent white flash, followed by two whirling funnels descending towards the Academy: one of fire, and one of…of…he didn’t know what it was. Black tar or something. As the whirling pillars descended earthwards, the very sky seemed to roar and rip apart.

  “What the fuck is going on?”

  Grace smiled. Tears in her eyes, she quoted from the book of Hosea, “‘For they sow the wind, and they will reap the whirlwind.’”

  Jason leaped from Grace, grabbed his rifle, and charged towards the edge of the tower. He saw the funnels touch down in the center of the Academy campus, just as the Anteros forces were rushing in on all sides. The soldiers skidded to a halt, turned, and then ran for their lives, the pillars chasing after them.

  Seeing her chance, Grace started crawling for the stairwell. She managed to get only as far as the second step before Jason grabbed her by her bad ankle and began to haul her back up. Grace screamed in pain, but held onto the wooden step with all her strength.

  “I’m not done with you, Celestial! Get back here!”

  Grace saw the lieutenant fly past her, tumbling head over heels down the first flight of stairs. She glanced behind and there stood Hera. Jason staggered to his feet, looked back up the stairwell, and screamed maniacally. He began to charge up the steps.

  “I’m going to kill—!”

  Jason’s dropped splicer rifle in her hands, Grace fired six shots into him. He fell back, and after a brief look of incomprehension on his face, pooled into goop.

  Grace lowered the rifle. “Shut up,” she said.

  Virgil continued to sweep the premises, pushing the majority of the Anteros soldiers back outside the Academy confines. His pillar of fire, like a blazing exclamation mark, tore through the remains of Jason’s soldiers, demolishing his army and scattering the panic-stricken survivors into full retreat.

  Across the campus, the twisting, black pillar of night sent holy terror through the ranks of Ajax’s forces. It crept steadily through his army, vacuuming up those who were too slow to avoid the maelstrom’s dark, dense gravity. Shrieks of terror turned to deathly silence, as not even sound could escape the eerie, black nothingness.

  No longer worried about return fire, as the pillars would soak up anything that was shot at us, I hurled down a third pillar, a twister of ice. I directed the whirling white vortex at Perseus’s troops. Getting caught in it was to be battered to pieces by thousands of fist-sized hailstones. It decimated Perseus’s army, strewing the campus with scores of his bloodied soldiers.

  Those Anteros soldiers who couldn’t outrun the terrible tornados tried escaping into Academy buildings, only to be met by cadet ambushes, and mowed down as they filed through the doors.

  “Retreat, retreat!” shouted Perseus from behind the side of the Academy administration building, his voice nearly drowned out by the roar of the whirlwinds.

  Lieutenant Chiron and Corporal Sparta rushed to the side of their captain.

  “Sir,” Chiron said, out of breath. “What the hell is going on? That blizzard thing has wiped out two-thirds of our men!”

  “I don’t know,” Perseus said. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  “It must be from Eros himself!” Sparta exclaimed. “We’ve angered him!”

  “Nonsense,” Chiron said. “Get a grip, Sparta.”

  “But what else could it be?”

  Perseus answered, “Something Volk had up his sleeve. I warned Hamanaeus not to underestimate him.”

  “But how?” Sparta said.

  “Beats the hell out of me,” Perseus said. “The guy knows stuff.”

  “‘Stuff?’ Sir, what kind of stuff?”

  “Secrets.”

  “How come we ain’t got no secrets?” Chiron griped. “We’re better than they are.”

  Sparta said, “But Volk isn’t even here! He’s stuck on Earth. He’s probably dead.”

  “Don’t count on it,” Perseus said.

  “Well, what do we do?” Sparta asked. “Maybe we should make a run for the disgronifiers and go back.”

  “There’s no one left down there,” Perseus said.

  “Whattaya mean?” Chiron said, appalled. “We outnumbered them hundreds to one, and they didn’t have any weapons! Plus, we have those damn fear demons. The cupids didn’t stand a chance.”

  Perseus smirked. “Neither did the Academy, remember?”

  Sparta, who was peering around the corner, turned to his commander. “Captain, you aren’t going to believe what that maniac Ajax is doing…!”

  His men having scattered, Ajax stood implacable. He seemed to mirror the oversized statue of the broadsword-wielding Eros in the Academy fountain next to him.

  The mighty warrior stepped into the fountain, and with a roar, bashed the arm of the statue with a double-fisted hammer blow, snapping it off. With his bare hands he cracked and stripped the plaster from the statue’s fist and peeled back the metallic, skeletal fingers that gripped the broadsword, freeing the weapon.

  The titan took up the huge iron sword and began to swing it in circles over his head, and then he pointed it threateningly at the pillar of night. He cursed at the whirling cloud, daring it to draw near.

  The vortex approached, halted, seemed almost as if to ponder the intrepid commando, and then changed direction, retreating along with the other twisters to stationary positions near the entrances to the Academy.

  Ajax smirked.

  31

  Stern Gang

  Cyrus shined his flashlight at the floor, drawing a circle around a square piece of plywood.

  “Are you sure this is it?” Gideon asked.

  “No, but there is only one way to find out.” Cyrus pried up the panel with his knife and tossed the board aside. “Hold on to my feet.”

  Gideon grabbed him by the ankles an
d Cyrus dropped down through the roof to have a look. Hanging twenty feet above the floor of the garage, Cyrus saw a number of vehicles, and just outside the hanger, the helicopter he had spotted earlier in the day.

  “See anyone?” Gideon whispered.

  “No.” Cyrus pulled himself back up, Gideon giving him a hand. “It looks clear, but it’s a long drop down. This used to be a barn, as I said.”

  “Too far to jump?”

  “Unless you want to go the rest of the way with a broken ankle.” Cyrus reached into his duster coat and pulled out a rope. “Tie this to that pipe behind you. It’s only long enough to reach halfway down, but that’ll have to do.”

  Gideon tied a knot and pulled on it to make sure the pipe was secure enough. “I dunno,” he said. “These pipes are pretty rusty, and who knows if those screws and brackets will hold. The wood is probably rotted too.”

  “It’s our only choice,” Cyrus said. “I’ll go first. You pull some on your end to help relieve the stress on the pipe.”

  “What about me?”

  “If you fall I’ll catch you.”

  “You’re a big guy, Cyrus. But if I fall on you, you’re gonna be a big dead guy.”

  “Then let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.” Cyrus dropped the rope through the roof and began to lower himself down. Gideon pulled as hard as he could to lessen the tension on the pipe.

  Ten feet from the floor Cyrus ran out of rope. He let go and dropped the rest of the way, hitting the ground with a graceful roll and popping back up. He looked above and signaled to Gideon to wait as he made certain that they were alone.

  Outside, beyond the edge of the garage, rain continued to pour. The sky lit up, followed by a cannonade of thunder. In the distance he heard the whine of sirens. Cyrus scooted from vehicle to vehicle, checking inside and under to ensure that no mechanics were working on any of them. Clear.