Maybelle finished her latest performance and the audience went wild with applause and whistles. Some of the patrons even threw a few coins for her onto the stage.
"Thank you, thank you all! You're all too kind." Maybelle bowed to the patrons as she picked up the coins before walking off the stage. As she walked past the kitchen, she could smell her mother's cooking and it was making her stomach growl and her mouth water like crazy. It's no surprise Bertha's cooking was delicious and the drinks in her father's bar were refreshing, but it was her singing that attracted many customers especially at night. After all, her father, being the co-owner of the Watering Hole with her mother, had a special tactic when it came to hospitality; if there's entertainment like a band or other kind of music, it made the food and drinks even more enjoyable.
She liked her job and she loved to sing, especially for all the patrons in her family's saloon, but she loved having a break from singing every now and then. But sometimes she had to fight tiredness and hunger to keep a good performance until the end. Luckily, that was her last performance for the night, and she can let the record machine do the rest for the remainder of the evening until closing time in the bar.
She went upstairs to her room at the far end of the lodging, just across from the one her parents had for their room. She went over to the dividers next to her closet and dresser, and she slipped out of her dress and boots and removed the headband from her hair. After putting her dress back into her closet along with the others she wore for her other performances on different nights, she grabbed her clothes she wore earlier to slip back into them. Her outfit consisted of a blue and purple plaid button shirt and white t-shirt underneath, torn blue jean capris and white flats. After changing into her clothes, she went over to the vanity and brushed her hair, then she wiped the make-up off her face. She put the coins she earned from the audience in a coffee can she kept the rest of her tips from her other performances and whenever she helped around the bar with Buford.
When she was finished, she was about to head back downstairs when she heard a tapping sound on her window. She turned around and saw Striker standing outside. He was standing on the outer deck above the saloon that were accessed by either the other rooms or even the fire escape.
Maybelle came over to the window and opened it. She said to him, "Striker? What are you doing out here? You know you could just come in from downstairs- Oh, shit! You're hurt!" She noticed the blood stain on Striker's jacket coming from a stab wound on his back.
Striker reassured her, "It's nothing, I'll live. I've felt worse, Maybelle. But I'm more concerned over her." He pointed to something behind him, and Maybelle saw a female imp with the top of her dress torn off as well as blood staining the back of it and her long hair.
Maybelle gasped at the state she was in, "She's hurt! What happened to her?" Striker picked her up from the floor and brought her to the window to take her in. Maybelle's shock almost disappeared when she recognized the imp's silvery grey hair.
"Are you nuts? What are you thinkin' bringin' her here?!"
"I had no other choice. She was about to get raped by those punks who were here earlier along with a buddy of theirs. One of the big guys stabbed me, and she got hurt distracting him for me." Striker picked her up and came into Maybelle's room. "Besides, I didn't know how Bertha and Buford would react seein' her here, or the other patrons, especially after this morning. I was gonna sneak back into my room until I saw the light on in yours, so I figured you could help me get her in here without getting spotted by your parents. Hope you still got your first aid kit."
Maybelle nodded. She said under her breath as she got it out from under her bed as Striker still held the imp in his arms, "Daddy's gonna kill me when he sees her here." She and Striker, still carrying the imp, snuck out of her room and went over to Striker's, hoping nobody spotted them or heard them. Once they got to the room, Striker set the imp down on the bed and moved her blood-stained hair to the side to get a better glimpse of her wound while Maybelle grabbed a bowl of warm water and a rag to clean the wound.
After examining the wound on the imp's back, Striker took off his shirt and looked at the stab wound in his back in the full length mirror. He had multiple scars on his back from past stab wounds and slashes, and he even had some on his chest and shoulders, including the fresh ones he received from his rustler assassination, so this one didn't seem so bad and he saw it as no big deal. He took on worse wounds like gunshot wounds and even nasty beatings to the face and ribcage, he even once got stabbed through the hand, but he was a pretty sturdy imp.
After examining his own wound, Maybelle came back with the water and rags, and she gave him a wet rag while she worked on the female imp on his bed. He grabbed a needle and a spool of suture from the first aid kit and got to work on himself. He winced in pain as the needle pierced his skin and came out and repeated the process to stitch his wound closed. It was painful to do this process every time he recieved a wound like this, but he was used to it and learned to endure the pain. He only had to keep this stitching in him until his wound was healed within a day or two. When it came to healing, a stab wound or even a cut would heal within a day or two on demons compared to humans from what he heard from Sinner demons who used to be human themselves.
After cleaning the blood off of his stitched wound after several minutes of stitching it, Striker covered it with a gauze pad before turning to Maybelle. She had finished dressing the imp's stitched up wound, and the imp was rid of her torn dress and her panties, since they were also stained with her blood from her wound, while one of Maybelle's old baggy shirts that she used for sleeping in was set on the side along with a fresh clean pair of panties; she hoped they were the imp's size. Maybelle picked up the ruined dress and cringed at it in disgust with all the blood and white spots on the skirt and top.
"Even for a prostitute, I don't know who chooses what she wears, herself or her pimp, because this is one ugly dress for someone like her." Maybelle muttered, throwing the dress into a nearby trash can in the room. She looked at Striker, who still had his shirt off, and said to him, "I better get downstairs before Ma and Daddy ask where I've been after my shift finished. You comin'?" She wiped the blood off her hands to remove any evidence of the imp's presence.
Striker shook his head. "I think it's best if I stay up here to keep an eye on her. Besides, I'm a little concerned that those dickheads who tried to rape her would be looking for her and tracked me down here with her. Plus, I don't know what your parents would think if they saw her in here with me."
"Okay, but you should still have tonight's dinner before we close in a few hours. Ma's cooking does go pretty fast, and there's a slim chance there'll be leftovers."
"You can bring up a plate for me. And give this to your parents to pay for my meal." Striker went over to his jacket and pulled out a few soul bills before handing them to Maybelle. She left the room and went back downstairs to meet up with her parents for dinner, promising Striker to bring up a serving for him after she ate.
When she was gone, Striker looked at the unconscious imp in his bed. He wondered if the singing he heard earlier came from her, since it sounded so familiar. But what made him more curious about her were some of her physical features, including her silvery grey hair and the marks on her body. He went over to the bed, and out of curiosity, he took a small lock of her hair in his fingers and felt around them. It wasn't common for female imps to have grey hair this light in color; this color was found mostly in succubi or even hellhounds. But there was no trace of hair dye or darker roots in her hair.
He then looked at her marks on her shoulders and arms, as well as her ankles. He noticed the ones on her shoulders were natural spots that imps would be born with, along with the one on the tip of her tail. But what interested him more was the marks on her arms and ankles. Judging by their shape and color, these weren't natural. These were scars. He had seen multiple imps with scars of different shapes and sizes, but he saw these were more than just simple slash scars from getting cut with knives and blades or trap scars from getting caught in bear traps.
Even the ones on her ankles and wrists made him even more curious. Could someone have given her those scars during her services? Or could it be something or someone else responsible. He knew it couldn't have been those two men and their buddy, since these ones looked like they were a few years old.
He would try to get his answers once she woke up, which would be a while judging by the pain she was in when she cut her back. He covered the imp with the blanket on his bed and decided to sleep on the couch nearby the bed to keep an eye on her, at least for as long as he could stay awake.
The same time Striker was helping Maya, Jasper was making his rounds around town to see if Victor's girls were doing their jobs and making their money for him.
Before he worked for Victor, he used to be a male stripper at one of Lust's semi-popular clubs who also moonlit as a bouncer at another club where his sister Tulip worked as a waitress while other hotter girls danced for their patrons or serviced them with lap dances. It was during one of his shifts at his sister's work that he met Victor when he was trying to offer her a job in his prostitution business, but Jasper instead offered himself to work for him. Admired by his intimidating behavior, not even caring about him protecting his sister, Victor offered to make Jasper his bodyguard in return for giving his sister a better job.
It had been two years since that deal, and Tulip was still working at the same strip joint. Jasper knew his side of the deal would never happen, but he still sent Tulip some of the money he earned from his job to help her out since she didn't get paid much and tips didn't seem enough for her. He found it boring having to make his rounds to make sure Victor's prostitutes got all the money they had to make every day and night.
He was making his way down the road when he came across a trio of imps who were injured, one of them having a broken arm and another having a bloody nose. Since this was the Wrath Ring, he believed they got into a fist fight with some random imp on the street to show off their strength and the underestimated their opponent. He walked down the direction they came from, believing Maya was somewhere down that road so he can gather up whatever money she had made.
When he didn't see any sign of her, at first he thought she went inside one of the bars to take a break, but there wasn't a bar where he was and all the stores were closed for the night. He decided to call her number that Victor gave to him along with the other prostitutes so he could keep track of his girls if he was too 'busy' to call them himself. After dialing Maya's number, he waited for her to pick up, but the phone just kept ringing. Finally, he heard another phone ringing in the alleys.
He followed the ringing to the alley between the general store and antique shop. After his phone went to voicemail, he called again and the ringing came back. He heard the ringing from close by, which turned out to be between some trash cans and old junk. He moved to where the source of the ringing was, and he found Maya's phone on the ground, the screen cracked badly, but still ringing.
He picked up the phone and saw that the cracks came from being stepped on by boots. Since Maya was barefoot, he knew it wasn't possible she was the one who smashed it, but maybe someone else had done it. He put it in his pocket so he could take it back to Victor and show it to him. After checking up on the other two prostitutes who were out for the night shift and taking their money they made to give to Victor. He walked back to the slaughter house, greeting his fellow bodyguard Russell, who was standing watch over the room, which used to be a walk-in freezer where two more of the other prostitutes were resting to make sure they don't run off in the middle of the night.
Once he reached Victor's office, he could hear loud moaning from inside along with painful cries. Victor must be in the middle of 'punishing' one of his girls for failing to make her quota. It took a few minutes to wait for him to be finished before the door opened, and one of the girls, Melon, came out with her torn panties in her hand. She was covering her mouth and crying, trying to hide the white stuff on the sides of her lips while holding down her skirt.
Victor stood by his desk, fastening the belt on his pants and wiping his hands clean. He shook his head, sighing to himself, "Poor Melon's been with me for two months and she still can't suck a man's dick good or get wet enough to turn a man on, or even cum at the right time." He threw the rag he was wiping his hands with into the trash can next to him when he noticed Jasper standing at the door.
"Jasper. Did you bring the money all my nighttime girls made?"
Jasper handed him all the money, and the pimp counted the dollars before he could put it in his metal box. He noticed there was less money than usual since there were three women he had take the night shift, including Maya. He looked at Jasper and asked him, "Did Maya make any money tonight? Did she even get someone hard once tonight?"
Jasper answered him, "I was just about to tell you about that. I found her phone on the ground, and I thought she might have gotten into some trouble with some passerby or something." He handed Victor the broken phone as proof of what he found. Victor just stared at the phone before tossing it aside in anger. He said under his breath, "She's probably trying to get away from me! Does she really think she could escape me? She's an idiot to think she could try to hide from me in this Ring."
He looked at Jasper and said to him, "Remember what I said to her and all my other girls? It's a cruel world out there in Hell,"
"For a girl like them." Jasper finished. He heard that many times whenever the prostitutes, mostly Maya tried to speak their mind to him.
"Exactly." Victor nodded. "And in Wrath, those corn-obsessed dickheads are probably going to swarm for her like a pack of hellhounds gang-raping a bitch in heat when they see her in plain sight. And she'd be begging to go back to me just to keep away from them because nobody's gonna let her in their homes or their stores for shelter. Tomorrow morning, you and the boys start searching all over town, and bring her back to me."
Jasper nodded before leaving the office to inform Russell and the others of what Victor ordered them while Melon was curled up in a ball at the corner of the room she and her fellow prostitutes were confined in, sobbing herself to sleep after what Victor did to her.
While alone in his office, Victor took out a photo of Maya from when she was 16, which he stole from his stepbrother's home before the day Maya blabbed the things he did to her to her parents. He said to the photo as he ran his fingers over Maya's hair and face, "You can't get away from your uncle, my little plaything. I can't lose my best girl and my little doll."
Helluva Boss belongs to Vivienne Medrano aka Vivziepop, and I own Maya, Maybelle, and Victor.