Devil's Dealer

There were dozens of files that contained the name Margaret Akane, none of them were being investigated but all of the cases were dead. Some of her cases seemed to be deferred to some federal division that nobody heard of, not FBI, not intelligence, the whole thing made my brain itch.

I confronted my partner about it, Turner, a detective who’d been in the job for over fifteen years. He simply took his hat off and scratched his balding head in what seemed like annoyance. The message was clear. Leave it. Not our business.

“Are you trying to impress somebody, kid?”

“I’m just noticing something weird, something no one seems to care about, is there something wrong with that?”

“I’ve been in the job a long time, and people like you get shot. Whatever you’re doing, keep me out of it.”

Shaking my head, I kept going. I wasn’t the kind to heed those kinds of warnings. Not even when I was a beat cop being told to look the other way.

Instead, I compiled a report detailing several cases that were chalked up to freak accidents, strange coincidences or resulted in a different perp being charged. A few of the cases had Margaret Akane as the witness. I spent the whole day looking into those cases and that left me more confused than before.

There was only one place to go, the chief. It took a while until she finally had a spare second. Chief Wexler beckoned me in and I took a seat opposite her, it was hard to see her over the chaos on her table. Folders and files piled high. On her bookshelves Wexler had a collection of books by sports professionals, which featured a whole row dedicated to sports coaches involved in basketball, football, baseball, everything. She was determined to eke out as much championship winning knowledge as she could gain.

“Give me a second, Detective Crane. Just need to put the finishing touches on the report from that incident at the River.”

“It’s funny you bring that up, I’m actually here to discuss one of the key witnesses we had on that case.”

Wexler paused her typing, and shut her laptop slowly. “Are you about to ruin my day?” She narrowed her eyes on mine, she didn’t have her gun in her hand or anything to enhance her intimidation, she was naturally terrifying. Her piercing blue eyes cut through me, I felt immediately like some kind of burden taking her away from all the issues she needed to see to, though I ploughed on anyway. I’d already come this far.

“Margaret Akane.”

Wexler leaned back in her chair and sighed, her eyes went to the ceiling like she was begging God for the strength to get through this day.

“I know, Chief. I know. Everyone’s said the same thing to me. Leave it, just look away. I don’t get it. This woman is involved in too many incidents for all of us to simply ignore. She’s even been noted as acting as a P.I for some of the organisations we’re investigating. We have to bring her in. The incident at the dam is another interesting case. A bunch of children drowned, while we had nothing to go on. She somehow finds the perp, rescues the kids and by the time we get there the perp has a strange amnesia that only applies to the time that they were active as the serial killer.”

Wexler took a deep breath before she shouted at me to the point that Turner had to walk in and drag me out. The famous Wexler ‘hairdryer’ treatment was well known, and feared by everyone.

Turner and the others laughed it off but I was annoyed. She didn’t take it seriously, she didn’t even discuss it with me. Something was going on and there was only one person that could give me the answers I needed.

My research had told me where she lived, the apartment also served as the office of her Private Detective, Demonologist, Occultist, and so many other professions. From what I gathered about her, she was 36, single, African American and of Japanese descent as well.

Her family had roots all over Africa and Asia, and now America. From what I could tell she didn’t have much of a family in America apart from a daughter, an ex-husband, and a sibling that was noted in her file with no other information.

She had no living parents, their deaths were stranger than anything on her file. The file said her mother was killed by her father. Margaret and her sibling were found at the scene, both claiming that they killed him in self defence, a claim that was refuted by investigators because there was no evidence that the two girls had done anything to him. Their mom and dad’s autopsies were full of strange holes, no wounds that could conclusively kill them were found after analysis.

My plan was to keep an eye on her from a distance first, I figured trouble would find her sooner or later, I just needed to be there for it. I waited in a pub at the bottom of the building her apartment was in. It was a quiet place, a lot of strange folks, lots of hoods. This place needed its own investigation, I could focus on that later though. I wore a leather jacket, with a beanie on. I waited patiently as the night wore on, knowing she’d appear at some point.

I didn’t expect her to turn up as late as she did, just a few minutes away from midnight she trudged in with her black jacket. Her afro was wet from the rain that was rampaging the streets. She had a pretty athletic build, and could have been considered tall for a woman at 5’11. Her eyes when they glanced over in my direction were dark, and weary. I felt like she saw right through me immediately.

She sat for about an hour, mostly chatting with the bartender. She seemed to be telling him a story in hushed tones. It must have been funny because the two of them were laughing quite a lot. I wanted to get closer, so I tried to walk towards the bar, that’s when I noticed his eyes.

A man in the corner with a hoodie on, covering his grey bearded face and eyes that were focused solely on her. I pretended to take a trip to the restroom instead of the bar, since it was in the same direction. I also really needed to piss. When I returned she was gone and so was the man who’d been eyeing her up and down. I thanked the bartender for the drinks and left a small tip as I went out after them.

I looked on all sides, eyes scrolling past everyone’s umbrellas and rained on coats. Eventually I caught her jacket down the road. He wasn’t far behind. She had a casual walk, I watched as she slipped down into an alley between two buildings. He immediately followed and I had to run. When I reached the alley I drew my gun, carefully pointed it down as I rounded the corner in the alley.

What I saw there nearly made me drop my gun. The man was standing right in front of her, and there were three strange creatures, covered in a bloody looking slime. They had scaled green and white patterns, like snakes. They emerged from inside his mouth, jaws spread wide displaying a set of haphazardly placed fangs, far more than any snake has. There was hunger in their jade coloured, eye slits.

“The blessed Serpent will have its vengeance.” The snakes hissed, leaning back as they prepped to attack Margaret.

“What the fuck?” I said, completely out of my control.

“Get away from here!” Margaret shouted. There was a card in her hand, she tossed it down and fire ignited all over the man and the snakes. That didn’t stop the snakes coming out of him, both of them fully escaping from his neck with hisses of anger. Two of them jumped up at her, a third one turned towards me.

Up close, I noticed the snakes had a red jewel embedded on what I wanted to call their foreheads. The one after me moved fast and then it stood like a cobra, unfurling itself, but the size of its upper form made no sense. It shadowed me, this was unnatural, no snake was like this.

I stood and fired my gun, it darted its head to the side and lunged at me, biting me in the leg. I cried out as an icy cold spiking pain spread through my leg. I tried to keep running but it was like my legs were freezing up. The snake smiled and leisurely started to wrap around my legs, over and over, seemingly growing while it was doing it.

Before my arms could be encircled, I shot a final shot at its head. It struck the jewel on its head and it hissed in anger and released me. The place where the jewel was hit was leaking a strange yellow blood. The snake shook and trembled, screaming in anger the whole time. Eventually it set its sight on me once more, I was still lying on the floor, my gun dropped after it released me. Its head darted down towards me for a bite.

Margaret appeared at its side faster than I could register, with a sword that was shining as if it was lit from within. I barely saw the slash that took the snake’s head off, it was a blur of white light and the thing was in pieces. The head landed beside me, still wriggling around and snapping its jaws at me but it couldn’t get to me.

“What the fuck was that?”

Margaret fixed her eyes on me and sighed. “That was a consequence of messing with me. Now who the hell are you?”

***

Margaret Akane

The detective watched me shove two humungous, demonic snakes into my fridge and said nothing. Most people would have freaked out. He just sat there watching me wrestle to skin the last one, before popping it into my biggest pot to boil.

“Will I be okay?” He asked.

I shrugged as I carried on with my prep. I was planning to boil the hell out of the snake to kill cleanse it of some of the dangerous stuff inside it, then brown it in a pan with some shallots, maybe get a stock and the closest thing to sherry I can find will be poured in, maybe some cream, season it like hell. I’ll somehow make some pastry. It was going to be like a weird eel pie from the UK. Ted sometimes made them at his pub for the fun of it.

“You’ll be fine.” I told the detective. “You’re Detective Charles Crane, right?”

“How did you know?”

Must not be that good at his job, I thought. I pointed at his badge, I had it on my desk. I put it there after I carried the bastard all the way up to my apartment. Ran into my landlord at the door of the apartment downstairs, he looked so disappointed. He’s told me several times to stop bringing strange men home.

“Are you going to eat that thing?” He got up and started to dress up, I saw him blush as he realised he was in his underwear on my couch. I had cut his trousers off to clean his wounds with some rare herbs I kept in my bathroom.

“Sorry about that, I needed to save your life somehow. I got you some stuff to wear over there. Size might be off. And yes, I will eat it, this is going to be really good.”

“It’s a snake that came out of a guy, won’t it kill you. Or poison you, seems like it nearly killed me.”

“I’m a pro with stuff like this. I literally live off demonic, possessed meat. Also it’s not a snake, just snake-like, it feels like chicken on the inside, especially after the boil when I clean it. I have this whole idea to do a spin on an eel pie. The pastry for it will be really nice and flaky. Well, at least I hope it will, I haven’t made a good pastry in a while.”

“I knew you were strange.”

I went over to the sink to wash off my hands. “Is that why you came after me?”

“I just wanted to understand why you weren’t under investigation.”

“I am.”

Charles’s eyes narrowed, “who’s investigating? I was trying to work out who is looking into your cases but the organisation is pretty hush hush.”

“You won’t know them. You shouldn’t know them. They’re the type that get mad when people know about them. I told one of your Detroit PD types about them once and the detective disappeared. It’s why Wexler sends the cases I’m involved in straight to that group.”

“I can’t just drop this, I want to know who they are.”

“I’ll give you their name, but you can’t type this in anywhere or look it up on cop databases, you’ll have to be completely analogue for this one, I’m talking libraries, museums and all that old stuff. Their latest iteration is known as Disco. Discretion and Supervision Control. In the past they were known as the Beyond Watch. You breathe a word of it to anyone and whatever happens to you is your own fault. I’m messaging Wexler tonight about this by the way. I don’t need her getting mad at me.”

He pulled on the baggy jeans I had lying around and watched as I pulled out the boiled demon meat and carefully cut into it, removing all the deposits of strange dark goop that could have been some nasty poison.

After a long time watching, Charles got up and grabbed his badge from my desk. He looked around at my apartment curiously. “You need more space.

He was right, the place was tiny, and crawling with stuff. I had strange old books everywhere, strangely shaped and coloured vials on the shelves, demonic snakes in my fridge. It was all chaos.

“I need money for that, which means more cases, profitable ones, not the kind where I kill a monster that’s stalking me. I know the Detroit PD has some juicy cases but Wexler only hires me when she has no other choice. You’ve seen me in action though, what do you think, could I make a good police assistant?”

“I don’t think any cop should be dealing with what I saw you deal with. It’s hard enough for us to deal with unruly human stuff, who knows the terrible things that could happen if we try to deal with your monsters.”

“I think I like you detective, you seem smart. Keep an eye out for me, if you see a case that doesn’t make sense, let me know.”

Charles nodded, he took a final look at the cuts of meat that I was slicing and dipping into flour. “You really shouldn’t eat that.”

He shut my door behind him and from the sound of his rushing footsteps, he was glad to be away from here.

He had no idea what he was missing out on. Besides, I had a job the next day. I needed to be back to full health, demonic meat has a surprising amount of protein. It even provided a small level of poison resistance that was essential in my line of work.