Shooting Eros - The Emuna Chronicles: Book 1: Hell-bent (Shooting Eros Series)

by Benjamin Laskin

  “Wait,” Hamanaeus said. “No potion was administered?”

  “None was needed. Rare these days, but certainly preferable.”

  “Then we still have a chance,” Hamanaeus said, hope returning to his voice.

  “A cupid interfered,” Sett said. “Swerver or not, she’s now disqualified. Even I know that.”

  “Not necessarily,” Hamanaeus rejoined. “No potion was administered.”

  “Doesn’t matter, Esquire.”

  “It does matter,” Hamanaeus insisted. “Her free will was not tampered with. Remember, another human can, of his or her own free will, undo the work of a cupid. Captain Volk may have temporarily cleared out her fear demons, but he didn’t otherwise alter her free will. There is still time for her to change her mind.”

  “You mean some interloper coming in and sweeping her off her feet?” Sett said.

  “Precisely.”

  “Fat chance.”

  “But not unheard of,” Hamanaeus said. “Has a wedding date been set?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Then we still have time!”

  “Who could she possibly fall for so quickly?” Sett said. “If you’ve read her profile, you know she lives a cloistered life. She is all work and no play. The only persons she ever sees are students and this Chauncey Matterson fellow. And she’s not the type to start dating a student. Don’t think you can nudge anyone in her direction either. It doesn’t work that way.”

  “I’m just saying this is not over.”

  “It is as far as I’m concerned,” Judge Minos said, out of patience. “You two fools are wasting my time. There is no Swerver, and if there were, we would never know about it. It’s a secret that could only be known by Eros himself, and that’s the way it has always been. Now get us home, Commander. We have real work to do.”

  “Yes, Sir.” Sett sent his orders and coordinates back to the disgronifying terminal.

  “And you,” Judge Minos said, pointing his cane at Hamanaeus. “If I ever see your face again it will be the last time.”

  Two whirling vortexes opened up around the judge and Commander Sett.

  “You’re making a big mistake!” Hamanaeus shouted, as the men were whisked away.

  Hamanaeus smirked. “Well done, Judge,” he said. “Playing the fool comes very easily to you, doesn’t it?”

  A team of camouflaged Anteros commandos emerged from the jungle’s edge. They trotted over to their commander.

  Lieutenant Phorcus said, “We had them in our sights, Sir. It would have been a great coup.”

  “And ruin a century of planning?” Hamanaeus said, irked by the very suggestion.

  “But it didn’t go the way you planned, Sir.”

  “No, but praise Anteros, it went better. You’ve got to step over a dime to pick up a dollar, Lieutenant. Keep your eyes on the big prize. Had we taken them out we’d have dealt them a blow, but it would have killed any chance we had to complete our plans.”

  “Solow,” Lieutenant Phorcus said.

  “Solow,” Hamanaeus repeated. “The Solow Accords are the prize. Solow gets us out of this hellhole and back into Heaven. And for Solow to proceed, we need more than just that ignoramus, Minos. He’s in, but as long as any of the other judges were to believe there was even a whisker of a chance that a Swerver was loose on the planet, they would oppose him. Now, with the Swerver issue out of the way—not to mention the great Captain Cyrus too—so goes the last objections to the Solow Accords.”

  “What about Sett?”

  “He’s Minos’s witness. If the highly regarded commander confirms that the Swerver has crashed and burned, the other judges will fall quickly into line.”

  38

  Crush

  Ellen Veetal’s last interviewee, number 364, was a scraggly-bearded young man in sandals. He wore a plain, long-sleeved, untucked white dress shirt, and held a golden Egyptian ankh, the cross-like symbol for life.

  The student assured Ellen that he had mastered the secret rites of every religion and occult tradition known to man, and that he could perform miracles and heal the sick. He claimed that he could speak to angels, who, he said conspiratorially, were really aliens from another planet. He also said he knew the dialogue of every Star Wars film by heart, could handle both PC and Mac, and was expert in every kind of enterprise, simulation, and media software. As an aside, he mentioned that he played ten instruments, ran marathons barefooted, and had also developed his own mixed form of yoga and martial arts, which he called “Jeet Kun-dolini.”

  Ellen smiled. “You’re quite an accomplished man for twenty-three.”

  “I have an old soul.”

  “I see. Well, Ralph, from your bag of tricks, I only need one indisputable piece of evidence that you possess some unique power. What do you have for me?”

  “That’s tough,” Ralph said, picking at his scraggly beard. “There are so many to choose from.”

  “Just one. Give me your best shot.”

  “Hmm, okay,” he said. “How about this? I’ll summon one of my alien friends.”

  “Will I be able to see him too?”

  He frowned at Ellen’s daftness. “Of course not. You haven’t been initiated.”

  “Then that won’t do. I need something that I can measure or document, something a little more concrete.”

  “Like what?”

  “Some old-fashioned telepathy, maybe. A little precognition or clairvoyance. Some psychokinesis would be terrific.”

  “Oh, that stuff,” Ralph said with a dismissive wave of his hand. “That’s child’s play. It’s beneath me.”

  “Beneath you?”

  “I promised the higher powers that I wouldn’t stoop to such trivialities. Such hubris angers the gods.”

  “The gods?”

  “Aliens.”

  “Right. So, you don’t have anything for me?”

  “I have the secrets of the universe! Isn’t that enough? Gawd…”

  “Yes, that will be quite enough, Ralph. Thank you. I’ll keep you in my Rolodex for when the space ship appears over D.C.”

  “That would be November 11th, 2045, if you must know.”

  “Okay, well, see you then,” Ellen said, and led him out the door.

  Professor Matterson passed the young man in the hallway on his way to Ellen Veetal’s office. “How’d it go, champ?” Matterson asked.

  “Good, good,” Ralph said. “We have a second meeting set up.”

  “You don’t say? That’s great. Good luck.”

  “Thanks, man.” He blessed Chauncey Matterson with a wave of his golden ankh, and jogged blithely down the stairs.

  Matterson shook his head, and seeing that Ellen’s door was closing, stuck his foot in to block it.

  Ellen knew that shoe. She pushed open the door and retreated to her sofa. She let out a long sigh between pursed lips and dropped down next to Carl.

  “Long day, eh?” Chauncey said, pulling up Ellen’s office chair in front of her.

  “Long couple of weeks.” She rubbed her temples. “But it’s over now, and back to the drawing board.”

  “Hey, don’t be too hard on yourself. You did your best. You have a very bright future, and I don’t mean just with me.” He winked. “I have a meeting shortly, but what do you say we get together tonight and discuss a new direction for your thesis?”

  “I’d rather discuss our wedding plans,” Ellen said. “I’m a bit burned out right now.”

  “Good idea. You can use a break. In fact, you know what? I was thinking maybe we should take a little weekend get-away. A colleague of mine has a cottage on a lake just a few hours drive from here. He told me I could stay there any time I like. Interested?”

  Ellen’s eyes widened. “Very.”

  “Great.” Chauncey slapped his knees and stood. “I’ll call my friend, and when I see you this evening, I’ll have an answer for you.”

  Ellen rose and pecked Chauncey on the cheek. “You saved my day.”

  “May saving
your day always be this easy,” he replied, smiling. “Okay, then. How about we meet at Corleones at, say, seven? Deal?”

  “Deal.”

  Matterson beamed and opened the door. Outside, hand raised to knock, was a handsome fellow around thirty years old. Dark, curly hair hung down from under the sides of his baseball cap, and the man’s striking, crystal blue eyes caused Chauncey Matterson a twinge of jealousy. Dressed in carpenter’s jeans, a red flannel shirt, and with a winning smile on his face, he seemed a far cry from all the other visitors that had been knocking on Ellen’s door over the past two weeks. He looked normal.

  “Hello, Professor Matterson,” the man said.

  “I’m sorry, do I know you?”

  “No, you don’t.”

  “Then how—?”

  “You’ve been on TV,” the man said. “Four times on PBS alone,” he added.

  “I see,” Matterson said, pleased to hear that he had achieved some renown.

  “Is Ms. Veetal in?”

  “Do you have an appointment with her?”

  “No, I’m afraid I don’t.”

  “Chauncey,” Ellen said, “who is it?”

  “I think you have another contestant.”

  “Tell him that the interviews have concluded and that I’m sorry.”

  “I’m sorry I’m late,” the man said over Chauncey Matterson’s shoulder. “But I’d really appreciate a few minutes with you.”

  “Perhaps you can tell me what your superpower is,” Professor Matterson said. “Ms. Veetal is a little busy.”

  “I don’t believe I have a superpower, but I was hoping Ms. Veetal might be able to tell me what it is I do have.”

  “Let him in,” Ellen said. “What’s one more interview going to hurt?”

  Matterson stood aside and let the man enter. “I’m late for my meeting, but call me if you need me for anything.”

  “Sure, thank you, Professor,” Ellen said, staring at her feet as she rubbed her temples.

  Matterson closed the door, leaving the man standing just inside the office. Ellen looked up. An expression of bewilderment flickered across her eyes.

  “Don’t I know you from somewhere?” she asked.

  “I get that a lot,” the man replied with a smile.

  “Wait…” Ellen said, getting to her feet and opening a desk drawer. She rummaged through a mess of papers, located what she was looking for, and closed the drawer with a twist of her hip. She held up a newspaper clipping and compared the picture in the story with that of the man standing before her.

  “It’s you,” she said. “You’re him!”

  “I’m who?”

  “The guy from the basketball game. That was you, wasn’t it?”

  Cyrus shrugged sheepishly.

  “How did you get your fanny in that hoop without anyone seeing you do it?”

  “I don’t remember,” he said.

  “Right…amnesia,” Ellen rejoined, dubious.

  Cyrus shrugged again.

  “And you’ve come to me, why?”

  “I thought maybe you could help me.”

  “Help you how?”

  “I seem to have possibly acquired some abilities that are a little unusual.”

  “For example?”

  “I’m pretty good at knowing things,” he answered.

  “What kind of things?”

  “Most things.”

  “There is nothing particularly unique about smarts, Mr.—” She glanced at the article again. “Cyrus, is that right?”

  He nodded.

  “I work at a university. I’m around brainy people all day long.”

  “I’m not speaking about that kind of knowledge,” he said. “I mean, I could impress you with such things, but that isn’t what you’re interested in, I don’t think.”

  “Well, Mr. Cyrus,” she challenged, “since you know what I’m interested in, maybe you could begin by telling me a little about me. Do you claim such knowledge?”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Please, don’t be wasting my time. I’ve had enough fun and games for one day.”

  “Well, correct me if I’m wrong or off base,” he began, “but, let’s see… Professor Matterson, he’s your boyfriend—”

  “Boo,” Ellen honked, as if pressing the buzzer in a game show. “Wrong already, wise guy. You’re off to a dandy of a start, aren’t you? He’s my fiancé, thank you very much. Big difference.”

  “A big difference indeed,” Cyrus said, hiding his concern. The Academy has wasted no time. “Okay,” he continued, “but I’m guessing you have probably still not told anyone but your best friend and confidant, Jill Taylor, who right about now is probably filing for divorce from her newlywed husband, Jack Sanders.” He paused.

  “Ting,” Ellen said, keeping up the game show theme.

  “Sniffing around in the corner of the room there,” he continued, pointing to Ellen’s dog, “is your lovable pooch, Carl, named after the noted Swiss psychologist, Carl Jung. Carl has recently been quite obsessed with that corner and behaving rather strangely, hasn’t he? Almost as if he sees something that we can’t, wouldn’t you say?” He spoke as if addressing the corner of the room.

  Ellen’s lips parted in surprise, but she said nothing.

  Cyrus smiled and continued. “Carl was a birthday present from an old boyfriend by the name of Bill Remington. Bill is now married—”

  “He is?” Ellen interjected, stunned.

  “Yes. Shortly after you dumped him, he met and married a nurse named Sandy and moved to the Southern Liberty Alliance, to Florida, Boca Raton. He has a two-year-old daughter named Betsy, a Welsh terrier named Boz, and he started his own architecture firm, which is already the fifth largest in the state.”

  “Mr. Cyrus, I can easily confirm these things, you know.”

  “Of course, you can. Would you like his phone number? I happen to know it.”

  Ellen gave Cyrus the fish eye and then casually made a pass around him, peering into his ears. “Jill,” she said. “This isn’t funny.”

  “What are you looking for?” Cyrus asked.

  “You tell me, smart aleck.”

  “A transmitter of some sort?”

  “Exactly.”

  Cyrus chuckled. “Well, look all you like.”

  “Go on,” Ellen said, having completed her circle. She looked him in the eyes in an attempt to read him.

  “What would you like to know?”

  “Something that no one else could possibly know about me,” she challenged.

  “Like the time when you were eighteen years old and you had a crush on your high-school’s star quarterback?”

  “Oh, surely you can do better than that,” Ellen snorted. “You know how many girls have had crushes on a star quarterback?”

  “A lot. But how many wrote poems of unrequited love about them?”

  “Quite a few, I’m sure.”

  “In iambic pentameter?”

  “Probably…”

  “And kept them?”

  “Plenty.”

  “In a Nike shoe box on the top shelf in the back of your closet in your parents’ home in Madison, Wisconsin?”

  “Look, pal, for all I know you some how know my folks and have been to my home. You’re going to have to do a lot better than that.”

  “I suppose you’re right,” Cyrus said. “Do you know what ever became of your high school crush after you two graduated?”

  “Well, Mr. Nostracyrus,” Ellen snarked, punning off the name of the famed 16th century apothecary and seer, Nostradamus, “why don’t you tell me if I know what happened to the guy?”

  “Timothy Cooper,” Cyrus said. “He left Madison and emigrated to the Southwest Freedom Federation, to Texas, and joined the Marines.”

  “He went into the Marines?”

  “Why the surprise? He told you that was his intention.”

  “I don’t remember any such thing,” Ellen retorted. “He was just a dumb jock who dreamed of nothing but p
laying professional football.”

  “At lunch in the school cafeteria,” Cyrus began, “he bought you a chocolate milk and sat down at your table. You were thrilled. It was three months before graduation. He asked you what your plans were, and you bragged that you had been accepted to four universities and were deciding which one to attend. You asked him about his plans, and he said he wanted to join the military. He told you that he’d go wherever they would take him. He mentioned nothing about playing ball.”

  Ellen listened, entranced. She did remember something like that. “Go on,” she said.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Why not? I like good fiction as much as the next gal.”

  “Well, you snorted your chocolate milk out your nose and mocked him. You lectured him. You tried to talk him out of it. You told him not to be a dunderhead.”

  “I did not,” Ellen protested. “I never use the word, dunderhead.”

  Cyrus shrugged. “As for being a dumb dunderhead, he got better grades and scored higher on his SATs than you did. He just never talked about it.”

  Ellen didn’t challenge the claim. She knew it was true. She hadn’t thought of Tim Cooper in years, but it all came back to her.

  “So,” she said, “just for fun, Mr. Know-it-all, tell me, whatever happened to the guy? Did he really end up throwing his life away like that?”

  “You might think so, but the four men whose lives Major Timothy Cooper saved in Mexico during the Cartel Wars when he jumped on the grenade that took his own life—they saw it a little differently. So did their families, and thousands of others. He received The SFF [Southwest Freedom Federation] Medal of Honor. Posthumously, of course.”

  Ellen’s hand flew to her mouth. “Oh my God! I had no idea…”

  “He left behind a wife and two daughters. Twins,” Cyrus added.

  Ellen motioned to Cyrus to sit, as she collapsed onto the sofa. Her eyes moistened and her cheeks flushed, but she held back any tears from spilling. She asked softly, “Why did he bring me that chocolate milk that day?”

  “He liked you.”

  “He did?” Ellen said, mystified. “No, I don’t believe that for a second. Besides, he was dating Mary Ann what’s-her-name.”

  “Mary Ann Sullivan. They had been broken up a month already. She had shown the same regard for his future plans as you had.”