Black Shadow Detective Agency

“Now this is going to go a little slower than I’d normally go,” I told them without turning back to face them. “You see, Sarah here asked me to let her watch. So I’m basically giving her a lesson on Daemon interrogation. And you? Well you two are going to be the subject matter of today’s lesson.” I heard both of them swallow hard and gave them a three count to come to grips with what was about to happen and how much pain they were about to be in. I turned back to face them, walked up to the Shadow Man on the right and massaged my hand with the silver knuckles. “Now I’m going to ask you again. Who hired you?” “I can’t tell…” was as far as the Daemon got before I smashed my fist into his gut. I then pulled back and with a solid hook to the jaw, knocked him to the floor still bound to the chair. There had been an almost pleasant sound of breaking bone to accompany the hit. Had he been Human, they would have needed to wire his jaw shut for a month after a hit like that. This guy though would heal up fast enough to allow me to work him over for a very long while and get results. I turned to look at the other Shadow Man. “Now let’s try you. Are you going to cooperate?” “I can’t tell you anything. I can’t break my contract.” His voice was pleading with me not to do what he knew I was about to. “Now that’s really too bad,” I said, sounding a little disheartened. I pulled back my fist and slammed it into the bastards face straight on. I turned back to the Daemon on the floor and set his chair up straight again. A bit of bluish blood dripped from his mouth. Prying open his jaw, I saw some teeth were missing and spotted them on the ground. “Now I’m sure that must have hurt a lot,” I said, and then slammed my fist repeatedly into his gut. I put my weight down on the chair and gave him a solid right hook to the side of the temple. “I’m sure that couldn’t have felt very good either. Now back to my questions. Who hired you?” “I can’t…” “Okay Sarah,” I called back over my shoulder. “This is one of the reasons it’s hard to interrogate two Daemons at the same time. They tend to heal up fast enough to be ready to withstand the next round of abuse before you’re done working on the other.” “Duly noted,” Sarah replied, pretending to take a note on an imaginary notepad. “So what are you going to do about it? Are you going to kill one of them now as an example to the other?” “In a sense, yeah.” I pulled out the Ace of Spades with her magazine of banishing rounds, aiming it at the Daemon who had been watching his pal take the beating. “Now what I’m about to do to your friend over there is going to be pleasant compared to what I’m about to do to you if you don’t start to cooperate.” “Like a bullet is going to kill him,” the Daemon laughed. “Who said anything about killing him?” I asked. I pulled the trigger. The bullet hit the Shadow Man dead center in the chest and then started to go to work. The bastard started screaming as the banishing round slowly sucked him inside out as it sent him back to a Hell that I didn’t really bother to care about. He wouldn’t be back anytime soon. “Wow. That looked painful.” Sarah said, faking a shiver. I leaned over the remaining Daemon who was staring at the place where his friend had just been sitting. A look of total panic made its way forcefully across his face. “How did…” “Oh that?” I shrugged. “Old trick I learned back about eighty years ago. Banishing rounds can be pretty messy as you just saw. But I assure you that it was pleasant compared to what is about to happen to you.” “Please. I can’t tell you. I can’t break my contract.” I jackhammered my fist repeatedly into his gut and the slammed a solid hook into his temple. “Now I’m well aware that you can break your contract. Yes, I’m aware that it will mean that you will never be able to return to this world. However, you should know that if I were to let you go without you giving me the answers I want, I would make sure that you would never want to come back. I’d just hunt you down and you’d go through all of this and then some again.” “I can’t…” I hit him square in the chest and heard bones crunch. He screamed and dark, blue-green blood spurted out of his mouth. “You’re not going to be able to get any answers out of him if you beat him to death,” Scar Face said. “Don’t worry, this isn’t going to kill him. I’ll let him sit there long enough to heal up a bit,” I said. The Daemon’s breath was ragged and the diseased-looking blood dribbled out of his mouth. I turned my back on him and waited for the sounds of his breathing to even out. I took off the silvered knuckles and put them back in the bag. I hadn’t really expected to get any answers out of him with those, they were just to soften him up a bit. I then pulled out a nasty looking scalpel with ancient runes etched upon the edge of the blade. As the Daemon’s breath evened out, I turned around and smiled at him. “Now let’s start again,” I said, showing the Shadow Man the scalpel. “Who hired you?”