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

by Benjamin Laskin

  Cyrus slunk towards a small office and peered through the glass window. Inside was a man with his feet up on a desk, snoozing in his office chair, an open whiskey bottle between his legs. Cyrus opened the door, crept in, wrapped his arm around the man’s neck, and choked him unconscious.

  He picked up the mechanic and laid him on the floor, binding his feet and hands with some rubber fan belts he grabbed off a shelf. Next, he stuffed an oily rag into the man’s mouth, snatched some duct tape hanging on a nearby hook, and ripped off a strip and slapped it across the mechanic’s face. The garage secured, he returned to the rope and waved to Gideon to proceed.

  Gideon began to lower himself. After just a few feet the pipe ripped from its moorings with a loud crack. Gideon plummeted, but other brackets held firm, causing him to jerk to a halt. It was the jerk that made him lose his hold as the rope tore through his hands. Cyrus braced himself for the catch as Gideon plunged into his awaiting arms.

  Gideon looked at Cyrus in surprise, and smiled. “My hero,” he swooned, and comically kissed Cyrus on the lips. Cyrus dropped Gideon on his ass and wiped his mouth on his sleeve.

  The two men scampered to the depot opening and looked out. A long, wide driveway led towards the garage, and in the center was a petrol stand for fueling up the compound’s vehicles. Beyond the driveway they saw a security fence, and past that, the heavily wooded mountains.

  Gideon, gun in hand, pointed at the helicopter and said, “Have you ever flown one of those before?”

  “No. How about you?”

  “Once, but it wasn’t very pretty, and it wasn’t an ancient model like that either.”

  “The helicopter is an old Bell 407, a four-blade, single-engine, civil utility helicopter. Want me to pilot?”

  “Cyrus, you just told me that you have never flown a chopper before.”

  “I never drove a car before until this morning either, remember? I happen to have known—”

  “Some helicopter pilots in your time,” Gideon groaned. “Good God, Cyrus, you are one freaky dude.”

  “So, that’s a yes?”

  “Well, someone has to be able to shoot, so fine, you pilot.”

  They ran out into the rain and leaped into the helicopter. Cyrus pushed some buttons on the control panel and they began to hear a series of ‘beeps.’

  “Is that bad?” Gideon asked.

  “Not if we hear seven of them.” They waited. After the seventh beep, he checked the lights on the control panel and said, “So far so good.” Cyrus put the bird into idle, and flicked the start switch. The copter roared to life.

  Gideon spotted two black security SUVs in the distance headed their way. “Oh, crap.” He turned to Cyrus and shouted over the copter’s racket, “Let’s get a move on, Cyrus. They’re coming.”

  “We need a minute for it to warm up.”

  “We don’t have a minute!”

  “Then make one,” Cyrus said.

  Gideon whipped out his cell phone and punched in a code.

  “I don’t think 911 is going to get us out of this mess,” Cyrus said.

  Gideon craned his neck and looked towards the south. Moments later they heard a terrific explosion.

  Cyrus saw a large fireball in the distance. “What happened to ‘no more surprises’?”

  “You, not me,” Gideon answered. “But now we’re out of vans.”

  Cyrus recalled Gideon having expressed concern earlier when he had blown up the first van. Now he knew why.

  The two security vehicles that were coming at them slowed to a halt, paused, and then one of them turned around and raced off in the direction of the blast.

  “Drat,” Gideon said. “We still got one. Can’t we go yet?”

  Cyrus checked the control panel. “No.”

  “How much longer?”

  “Soon. When this little light here turns green.”

  “We don’t have soon!”

  Malkah Stern kept low and continued to scurry behind the hedges along the edge of the mansion. She rounded a corner, and then ran out of hedge. She squatted and observed a team of security guards dash across the street towards the mansion’s west wing.

  Behind her she heard the scratchy, crackling sound of a radio dispatch. Malkah turned and saw a compound golf cart zip around the corner. She tore her shirt, messed up her hair, and rubbed some mud on her face. Then, feigning a painful limp, Malkah hobbled out in front of the cart. She waved her arms and screamed, “Help!”

  The cart skidded to a halt and the driver, a man in a yellow, hooded rain coat, pointed his gun at her. “What are you doing out here, lady?” he hollered. “Everyone is supposed to be inside!”

  “I saw them!” she cried. “They attacked me!”

  The man pulled out his walkie-talkie to call in the report. “Where?”

  Malkah pointed to a stand-alone bungalow about fifty yards away. “They ran into that cottage. There were six of them, and they had guns!”

  “Six?”

  “Maybe more!”

  “Get in,” the man ordered. “Hurry up. I’ll take you back to the main mansion. It’s well guarded and you’ll be safe there.”

  Malkah limped over to the passenger’s side and stepped into the cart. As the man was about to put the vehicle into drive, she twisted and smashed the driver in the nose with her elbow, catching him completely by surprise. His nose gushed blood and he saw nothing but tears and white light. Malkah grabbed the man’s gun, and with both feet she shoved him toppling from the cart. She hopped into the driver’s seat and sped off.

  The road forked off before her. Malkah knew that left would take her to the front of the mansion and along the main drive that bordered the common. She saw smoke in the distance and heard sirens. She didn’t know where a right would lead, but it appeared to be some sort of utility lane, used primarily for maintenance crews and the like. At the last second, she pulled right and zipped down the narrow road.

  “Oh, Malkah,” she muttered to herself, wiping the rain from her face. “What have you gotten yourself into?”

  She thought of Gideon and Cyrus. Who were these men? How did she come to trust them so, to get sucked into their crazy world? How could two men be right, and the rest of the world be so wrong?

  But she knew the answer to that question. It was part of her secret. She knew it wasn’t fair to hold their mysterious pasts against them. After all, they had been a lot more honest than she had. She wiped again at her face. The rain was coming down harder now.

  Malkah was aware that what Gideon and Cyrus didn’t know about her was precisely what had brought her to this absurd point—a newly minted fugitive riding in an open golf cart through a storm. She had no idea where Gideon and Cyrus were, but that people were still looking for them comforted her. It meant that they probably weren’t dead…yet.

  A siren interrupted Malkah’s ruminations. She looked behind and saw a compound security vehicle, a black SUV, speeding towards her. That’s it, she thought. I’m going to prison.

  Outrunning them in a golf cart was out of the question. She assumed that they probably found the guy with the broken nose. The little damsel in distress routine was not going to work a second time. She slowed to a stop.

  “Put your hands up and step out of the vehicle!”

  Malkah did as told.

  Two men ran up, guns leveled. One of the men, a short, stocky fellow with a mustache said, “Hands on the vehicle!”

  He holstered his gun and shoved her against the golf cart. The second, a tall man with a big nose and bald head kept his gun trained on her. He kicked apart her feet as his partner proceeded to frisk her.

  “What are you doing out here?” said the frisker.

  “Looking for a friend,” Malkah answered. “She got lost in the chaos. I was worried about her.”

  “Jim,” the tall one said, “the seat.”

  Jim peeked into the golf cart and saw the gun Malkah had stolen sitting on the passenger’s seat. He daintily picked up the gun and dropped
it into a plastic bag and handed it to his partner.

  “You’re in big trouble, girl,” he said, pulling out a pair of plasticuffs. “Now, slowly, hands behind your back.”

  Malkah moved slowly—too slowly.

  Jim grabbed her left wrist and yanked it behind her. Just as he reached for the other, a terrific—boom!—echoed through the air. Instinctively, the two men turned. They saw a fireball balloon in the vicinity of the guest cottages on the other side of the mansion. The explosion was much louder than the one Malkah had heard earlier when she was talking to Ellen.

  Malkah didn’t waste a moment. Her years of martial arts training immediately kicked in. Totally committed, she whipped around and delivered a crushing blow to Jim’s larynx, followed by a hard knee to the groin and an open palm to his chin. He buckled groaning in the fetal position, gasping for breath.

  The tall one with the gun turned back around, but Malkah, using a Krav Maga technique she had rehearsed a thousand times, grabbed his wrist, twisted, and took away his gun. She followed with a two-fingered jab to his eye. Blinded, his hands on his face, she cracked him on the head with the gun and then smacked him in the solar plexus with the heel of her hand. The big man folded in half with a gasp. Malkah grabbed him by the ears and rammed her knee into his nose. He collapsed in a heap.

  She turned back to Jim the frisker and saw that he was clumsily reaching for his holstered gun. Malkah kicked him in the face, then, knees pointed together, dropped missile-like into his back. The man let out an expiring yelp, and went limp.

  She gathered up the guards’ guns, phones, and walkie-talkies, and dashed to their SUV. She threw them onto the passenger’s seat, jumped in, and raced off.

  Up ahead she saw that the road came to a T. Left would lead back around to the front of the complex; right, she assumed, would take her to the mansion’s hindquarters. Thirty yards from the intersection, she saw a black SUV like the one she was driving zoom past, headed in the direction of the recent blast.

  The black SUV closed in on them, but cautiously. Gideon readied his Walther P99, leaned out the copter’s door and aimed it at the car.

  The car stopped forty yards away. The doors flung open and two soldiers bounded out, both with high-powered rifles. They hustled behind the car and took cover. A third soldier with a red megaphone in hand leapt out and joined the other two.

  “Identify yourselves!” he called out.

  “Crap,” Gideon said. “What’s wrong with this bird? What’s taking so long?”

  “Maybe this is why it was in the garage.”

  “Oh, great…”

  The security vehicle began to inch closer, the three soldiers following behind it.

  “Step out of the helicopter, now! Step out or we shoot!”

  “Okay, Cyrus, I take it back. If you’ve got another surprise, show it to me.”

  “Sorry, all out.”

  Another black SUV came tearing down the gravel road towards the first.

  “Aw, damn,” Gideon said. “They’re back. They must have turned around.”

  Cyrus said, “They are driving kinda fast, don’t you think?”

  The soldiers taking cover behind the first vehicle thought so. They turned around and motioned to the oncoming SUV to slow down. It didn’t. The soldiers waved frantically at the vehicle until it became abundantly clear that it had no plans to stop.

  The three soldiers leaped out of the way, two to the left, and the one with the megaphone to the right. At the last second the SUV swerved left, headed right for the two soldiers. The car slammed on its breaks and went into a well-controlled slide, the back of the car fishtailing around and smacking one of the soldiers, swatting him away. He rolled twenty feet and lay sprawled and unconscious.

  The driver’s door to the SUV flew open, and out dove Malkah Stern, a gun in each hand. She rolled and came up firing. She expertly nailed the second soldier with two shots to the chest, and then took down the man with the megaphone with two more shots.

  The driver of the other vehicle spilled out the passenger’s side and took cover behind the front right tire. Malkah charged towards him, guns out in front of her.

  The man stayed low, pressed to the front wheel, his gun at the ready. He swung his head back and forth, left and right, unsure which side the attacker would come from.

  She came from neither. Malkah cartwheeled over the hood of the car and landed right in front of him, shooting him three times. The elimination of the security team had taken less than fifteen seconds. Malkah looked up and saw two more black SUVs racing to the scene.

  “Green!” Cyrus shouted. He reached next to the seat for the collective control stick with its twist-grip throttle and began to ease the bird up as his feet maneuvered the dual pedals on the floor.

  Gideon, who already had one foot out the door to run and help Malkah, yelled to her to get in. She dashed over and Gideon grabbed her hand and pulled her inside just as the copter was leaving the ground.

  “Malkah,” Gideon hollered, “what the hell were you thinking!”

  “About you.”

  “You just killed four men!”

  Malkah shrugged. “Better them than you.”

  A bullet blasted through the front window.

  “Down!” Gideon yelled. He turned to Cyrus. “Doesn’t this bird move any faster?!”

  “No.”

  Gideon leaned out the door and fired at the first vehicle.

  “That’s not going to do much good,” Cyrus said. “Wait another few seconds and aim for the petrol pump.”

  As soon as the two security vehicles came within yards of the single gas pump, Gideon emptied his gun into it. The gas stand exploded. A fireball mushroomed, engulfing the helicopter.

  “Ow!” Cyrus yelped.

  “Whoa!” Gideon said. “Are we okay?”

  “I…hope so,” Cyrus answered.

  “I’ll take it. Let’s get the hell out of here!”

  “Where are we going?” Cyrus asked, shooting away, leaving the compound behind. “The entire sky is going to be filled with copters and planes looking for us.”

  Malkah slapped a folded map onto Gideon’s knee and pointed to a red circle. “There,” she said confidently.

  Slack-jawed, Gideon gaped at Malkah. “Who are you?”

  32

  Judgment Day

  Once Captain Volk joined Abishai and the rest of his team, the tide turned inexorably in favor of the cupid angels. The angels having tapped into their divine energies, which only grew stronger with their newfound confidence, plus Volk’s even greater powers, turned the battle into a rout. When Sett appeared with Hamanaeus draped unconscious over his shoulder, a cheer went up among the angels.

  Sett dropped the Anteros leader on the ground and poked him with the toe of his boot. “Esquire,” he said. “Wake up.”

  Hamanaeus came to and saw the faces of Commander Sett and Captain Volk staring down at him. He sat up and looked about in dismay. Around him the angels were mopping up the remnant of his forces. The battlefield was strewn with the carcasses of dozens of yetzers, and the dematerializing bodies of hundreds of his soldiers.

  Judges Minos and Busiris shambled over and looked down at Hamanaeus. Minos spat on him, then turned to Sett and ordered, “Kill him! Kill the traitor!”

  Hamanaeus smirked. “That would be convenient for you, wouldn’t it, Judge? What surer way to keep secret your betrayal of Eros and the Academy?”

  “What is he talking about?” Judge Busiris said.

  “Nothing,” Minos said. “He’s just trying to save his neck.”

  “I’m already a goner,” Hamanaeus said. “I have nothing left to save but my dignity. Tell them, Judge. Tell them how it was you who first contacted me when you realized that the fear demons had grown too powerful, the humans too decadent, and your pathetic Academy too weak to do anything about any of it. You needed help, and so you sent me your emissary, Madam Grace’s former boss, Madam Demeter, to proffer a deal, a treaty—Solow. What yo
u didn’t count on was that she would find us so convincing, work on our behalf as a double agent, and start recruiting your best soldiers to our side one by one.”

  “Do you have proof of this?” Busiris asked.

  “Of course. Letters, missives, taped meetings with Chief Secretary Demeter.”

  Minos said, “Nothing you’ve said is new. Everyone knows I have been working for a peace treaty.”

  “Indeed,” Hamanaeus said. “Such news is not so shocking, but what the commander and captain here might find deeply interesting is your part in compromising the Swerver.”

  “Commander, Captain,” Minos said nervously. “Do not allow this pathetic criminal to sit there and mock us with his desperate lies!”

  Sett ignored the judge. “Go on, Esquire.”

  Hamanaeus said, “It was I who discovered that Ellen Veetal was the Swerver. The Chief Secretary, Celestial Demeter, passed on this news to the judge. Minos knew that if one of his cupids were to marry her off, she’d be disqualified, which is why he gave the job to his best cupid, Captain Cyrus, to ensure that the Swerver would never swerve. Only Cyrus somehow grew suspicious, and messed up his plans. In an attempt to silence him before he learned too much, he had him banished.”

  “But why would he do that?” Abishai asked, addressing Hamanaeus. “The Swerver would have bought us more time and he would not have had to pursue the Solow Accords. And besides, as it turned out Ellen Veetal was not the Swerver.”

  “Exactly,” Minos said. “It’s absurd!”

  Volk said, “Absurd if one assumes that the judge actually believes in the job he is entrusted with. But you don’t, do you, Judge?”

  “What are you talking about? I’ve dedicated my entire life to the Academy, to Eros, to fighting this war.”

  “And it exhausted you,” Volk said. “You have no faith left, and haven’t for a very long time. You see no end to this merry-go-round. You thought, what if there had been a Swerver and she had bought us more time? So what? What’s the point? We would just end up in the same position another generation down the road. No, you wanted to put a stop to it all, and the only answer you could conceive of was an alliance with Anteros, and surrender to the fear demons.”