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

  Shooting Eros

  The Emuna Chronicles Book 1: Hell-bent

  Benjamin Laskin

  Aretê Books

  Copyright © 2014, 2017 by Benjamin Laskin

  All rights reserved.

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to persons living or dead is coincidental.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  ISBN: 978-1-5001-8671-5

  Created with Vellum

  In memory of my beloved father, Nathan Laskin, who is playing tennis with the angels.

  Contents

  Epigraph

  1. Prologue

  2. Staging Ground

  3. Spear Words

  4. Chance Encounters

  5. Dormitory Davids

  6. Doggie Style

  7. Whistling in the Dark

  8. Graceland

  9. Old School

  10. Wedding Crashers

  11. Party Animals

  12. Coffee Buzz

  13. Breathless

  14. Remembrance Day

  15. Flying Pig

  16. Swerve

  17. Spitfire

  18. Hamanaeus

  19. Phantom Man

  20. Honey Marooned

  21. Future Shock

  22. Malachim!

  23. Sackcloth and Ashes

  24. The Last Weed

  25. Goaltending

  26. Starman

  27. Skipping Odds

  28. X-Files

  29. Castaways

  30. Six Degrees of Separation

  31. Jailbirds

  32. Grace Period

  33. Clueless

  34. Memory Lane

  35. The Mess

  36. Going Ballistic

  37. Fool’s Game

  38. Crush

  39. Dear Diary

  40. Crossroads

  41. Lady of the Lake

  42. Pesto

  43. Dinner Theater

  44. Stairway to Heaven

  45. The Four

  46. Buddy

  47. Scout’s Honor

  48. Alley Oops

  49. Backdoor Deal

  A Message from Benjamin Laskin

  Other Novels by Benjamin Laskin

  Special Offer

  About the Author

  Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind; And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.

  William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream

  1

  Prologue

  My name is Kohai. I am a cupid cadet. A soldier of love. If this manuscript has fallen into your hands it means that you are among the chosen. There are no coincidences.

  Forget everything you think you know about love, because what I am about to tell you can only be comprehended by a mind free of illusion.

  This chronicle documents the true account of a small band of cupid commandos who are risking everything to save love from extinction. It is the story of a war that has raged from time immemorial, but a war whose end may be close at hand. You think that true love is possible, but I’m here to warn you that if we fail in our mission, it will not be for much longer.

  Note: This testimony is part memoir, part chronicle, and whether the story is told in the first or the third person, I, Cadet Kohai, am responsible for every word. In places and times where and when I was not physically present, I have relied on an infallible source; something that I have only recently learned to navigate: knowledge gleaned from the Midrashic Record, or Midrasha.

  For now, think of the Midrasha as a hyper-dimensional library—a super-enriched, aether-based, holographic recording of every living moment of every being who has ever lived. Every individual, from time antediluvian to the ever-updating present, has his or her own ‘Book of Life,’ and it is stored in perpetuity in the Midrasha. I have transcribed every word and thought of every character that appears in this chronicle exactly as they were recorded in the Midrasha, employing literary license as little as possible, and only for the sake of clarity.

  Now brace yourself, because by the time I finish, or someone finishes me, nothing is ever going to look the same to you again.

  2

  Staging Ground

  Year 2034 of humankind’s Gregorian calendar.

  From behind a large pine tree I observed six cars parked at the edge of a cliff overlooking the glittering cityscape below. At my back stood a grove of towering evergreens, and above sparkled a cloudless, crystalline night sky.

  In one car I spied a shy, fidgeting couple. In a second, a passion-fueled pair groped madly at one another, and in a third, a young woman fended off her date’s amorous advances. The remaining partners cuddled or kissed, the lights of the sprawling metropolis before them. Drifting across the plateau from a car’s stereo I heard the forgotten twentieth-century crooner, Lou Rawls, singing, “Love is in the air…”

  Then it began.

  A group of malevolent-looking figures slunk out of the woods towards the unsuspecting lovebirds. As they neared, I saw that these entities were neither human nor cupids like me. They were otherworldly—beastly and demonic. With surprising speed, the creatures pounced, dragging the shrieking couples from their cars.

  Startled, I sprang backwards and tripped. I scrambled to my feet and reached for my weapon, only to recall with bitterness I had yet to be issued one.

  At that moment, ten mini-maelstroms, vortices of sparkling light, appeared out of thin air and touched down upon the plateau amidst the tumult. From each vortex bounded a heavily armed man in night camouflage. It was a squad of elite cupid commandos, the most recent crop of cadets about to graduate from the Cupid Academy.

  The soldiers wore black, full face helmets, and strapped to their bodies and in hand, they carried the latest in love warfare: plasma rifles, photon-emitting submachine guns, demon dusters, pulsar passionator guns, lust grenades, and other matchmaking weapons.

  Immediately sensing danger, the monsters flung away their victims, and roaring, turned to face the intruders.

  A furious battle ensued, the cupid commandos blasting away at the demons with their lethal weaponry. The beasties exploded, flamed, or melted into sickly goop. A nauseating stench filled the air. In just a couple of minutes it was all over. The creatures that weren’t vaporized or defragmented—parts of which hung draped and dripping from tree branches, or oozing down car windows—lay sprawled or mangled on the ground.

  Applause and whistling erupted as night turned to day with the flick of a switch inside the immense geodesic dome that housed the Cupid Academy Training Center. “Lover’s Leap” and its battleground returned to a porcelain white stage. The cars, the forest, the sky above, the city below, and the very tree I had been hiding behind, vanished.

  The ‘lovers’ removed their wigs and masks, the ‘creatures’ stepped out of their costumes, and they all slapped one another on the back in congratulations. Together they walked over to the commandos, who took off their helmets, and so exited virtual reality.

  The players were made up of young men and women, cupid cadets and celestials. By human standards they looked to be in their late teens and early twenties. They laughed, shook hands, and exchanged more pats on the back.

  I removed the virtual reality goggles I was wearing, as did my mentors, Captain Cyrus and Captain Volk. Because the three of us
were uninvited onlookers, we stood quietly and undetected at the far side of the stage beside a large, slowly spinning model of Planet Earth. We wore white jumpsuits, and the captains sported their customary blue baseball caps with a big, red letter ‘C’ on them.

  Captain Cyrus was a tall, V-shaped, and strapping cupid warrior who would pass for his early thirties in Earth years, though his actual age could be measured in centuries. The captain had thick, curly black hair, pellucid-blue eyes, and a dark, trimmed beard. Even by cupid standards Cyrus was considered exceedingly handsome. Confident, and at ease in any situation, the captain was a commanding presence wherever he stood. It was Captain Cyrus who chose me from among all the other cadets to be his and Captain Volk’s sole apprentice. It was a decision that I did not understand, and one that left the entire academy scratching their heads.

  Captain Volk, sturdy and ruggedly good-looking with bristle-short, rust-colored hair and beard, was Cyrus’s best friend and longtime comrade in arms. A no-nonsense cupid commando—stoic in demeanor, blunt in word and deed—Volk was fiercely loyal to Cyrus, and to his sworn duty.

  At the Academy, the captains were known for their unorthodox ways, and the mystique they wore like a cloak. The ignorant considered the two warriors to be crackpots: has-beens or curious artifacts of a time gone by. But to those who knew anything of their true exploits, Cyrus and Volk were living legends.

  Mostly, however, the captains were ignored and left alone, which suited Cyrus and Volk just fine.

  I, Kohai, was their sole student. My best friend and roommate, Virgil, once described me as “a lean, mean, thinking machine.” I confess, however, that the other cadets’ descriptions of me weren’t so flattering, and were closer to the human designation of “a wimpy, pencil-necked geek.”

  I turned to the captains. “How come I’m not learning how to do that?”

  Cyrus said, “If that’s what you want to learn, Kohai, we won’t stop you.”

  “I’m just saying—”

  “We weren’t asking,” Volk said.

  A dark-skinned, bearded, grave-looking cupid with a shiny, black baton approached the cadets. He wore a white and grey camouflage jumpsuit, and holstered a demon duster at his side. The imposing figure was Commander Sett. A grizzled veteran of innumerable campaigns, every Academy cadet trembled before him.

  Sett whistled sharply and shouted, “Quit acting like a bunch of fairies!”

  The cadets snapped to attention.

  “Better than yesterday,” he groused, “but that means half of you morons would still be goop.”1

  [Occasionally, I, Cadet Kohai, will provide additional details or explanations for some of the terms or concepts used in this chronicle. They are for clarification, but you can skip them, should you prefer.]

  Note 1: ‘Goop’ is a term used for a dead cupid or celestial. If a cupid or celestial meets his or her death on Earth, the body typically turns to a clear, oil-like ectoplasm. The puddle of ectoplasm evaporates soon afterwards. What becomes of us after gooping is speculation, and depends upon one’s beliefs. The professors at the Academy teach that there is "nothing" afterwards. They insist that death is an end, just as birth was a beginning; no before and nothing ever after. The ancient sages whose work I study in the archives, however, saw things differently. They spoke of a ‘Book of Life,’ of judgment, and an afterlife of one kind or another. They taught that all souls—the existence of which the Academy categorically denied—would be in the Creator’s hands: weighed, and then rewarded or punished accordingly.

  Sett pointed his baton at a cadet. “You!”

  The cadet threw back his shoulders and saluted. “Sir, Cadet Hector, Sir!”

  “Don’t you know a Blame Demon from a Fault-finding Demon, Cadet? Blame Demons are two-thirds stinking vapor. Had this been for real you’d have taken out two of your own men with that over-dialed laser blast, you dolt.”

  “Sir, I wasn’t thinking, Sir!”

  “It’s not about thinking, Cadet. You know, or you’re goop. Got that?”

  “Sir, yes, Sir!”

  Sett thrust his baton towards another cadet. “And you.”

  “Sir, Cadet Terence, Sir!”

  “Hand to hand with a Mocking Demon, Cadet? Very impressive.”

  “Sir, thank you, Sir!” Terence turned to his fellow cadets and flexed his big biceps.

  Sett snorted. “You’re so stupid you died twice. Your shrieks of agony are still ricocheting between the pillars of Heaven. Hand to hand with any of these bastards and you don’t stand a chance, but a Mocking Demon? In your dreams, Cadet. In real life, that beast would have turned you into confetti.”

  Sett shook his head in disgust.

  “If any of you hope to graduate next week, then you’ll be back here at thirteen-hundred sharp to watch this pathetic exhibition on playback, move by moronic move. Then we do it all again until you get it right.”

  “Sir, yes, Sir!” the cadets sounded in unison.

  Then, to solidify his threat, Sett barked the two words that every cadet dreaded most, “Commando Ajax!”

  The warrior stepped forward. The cadets involuntarily shrank two steps back.

  Ajax was a giant, both in stature and deed. At nearly eight feet of solid muscle, he towered over every other cupid soldier, none of whom were small. He had long, flowing black hair that covered his shoulders, a thick black beard, and cold, obsidian-like eyes. Commando Ajax was one of the most decorated of living cupid soldiers, having earned every medal the Academy could pin on his immense chest.

  Brute force incarnate, I never heard of any commando dumb enough to challenge or question the titan. He rarely spoke, and was uninterested in rank, the commendations he had received, Academy politics or its intrigues. Commando Ajax lived to slaughter fear demons, and as long as others stayed out of his way, he had no beef with anyone.

  “Sir,” he said.

  “You will see to it that the cadets will not embarrass us again?”

  Ajax nodded, a curl at the edge of his thick lips. “Understood,” he replied coolly, his menacing dark eyes supplying the commentary.

  “Cadets?” Sett said.

  “Sir, yes, Sir!” the cadets shouted, prodded to a new sense of urgency.

  “All right,” Sett said, satisfied. “Dismissed!”

  The cadets heaved a sigh of relief and jogged off.

  “Virgil!” I called out.

  My only friend among the cadets, Virgil was a handsome cupid with floppy blond hair and wholesome blue eyes. Built like a fabled Nordic god, he was also a superb athlete, and liked by most everyone. Despite his popularity and charms, Virgil was a simple and humble cadet, and the only one who didn’t pick on me.

  Virgil stopped and looked back. I gave him the thumbs up. He smiled, returned the thumb, and scooted to the locker room with the others.

  Again I turned to Captain Cyrus. “Sir, when do I graduate?”

  “When you’re ready.”

  “When will I be ready?”

  “When we say so,” Volk answered.

  “But I started way before those guys, and I haven’t even begun weapons training yet.”

  “Your greatest weapons are your heart and mind,” Cyrus said.

  “You keep saying that, but I still don’t know what it means. Virgil and the others have visited Earth three times already. I haven’t even been in the teleport room.”

  “Big deal,” Volk said. “Neither have we.”

  “Huh?” I said, incredulous.

  “Patience, Kohai,” Cyrus said.

  3

  Spear Words

  In another, smaller geodesic dome, rows of tables filled with ravenous, rambunctious young cadets ate, laughed, and ribbed one another in family-like fun.

  I sat next to my pal, Virgil, happy that for a small part of each day I was allowed to participate in the camaraderie of my fellow cadets. Captains Cyrus and Volk, chopsticks in hand, lunched alone at a separate, smaller table behind us.

  Commander Sett strol
led up to the captains. “So, gentlemen, what did you think of our little demonstration?”

  Volk said, “It was a joke, Sett, and you know it. The cadets aren’t close to ready for what really awaits them down there.”

  “Ready as any class ever is,” Sett retorted. “They’ll do just fine. Besides, outta time. I’ve got another class of recruits I need to field right after them.”

  Cyrus said, “You’re just leading lambs to the slaughter.”

  “In case you haven’t noticed, Captain, there’s a war going on down there, and we’re losing. We don’t have the luxury of years of training. I train hundreds of boys to your one. Hell, I can’t even remember the last time you two put a man in the field.”

  “Our one is worth a thousand of your demon snacks,” Volk said.

  Sett snorted. “Until I actually see your ‘one’ in the field, I suppose I’ll never know. Face it, your methods are obsolete. If we don’t start fielding more soldiers and better weapons we are all doomed—the lousy humans and us. Apparently, I’m the only one around here who seems to understand that.”