Today Lucielle and I were going up to Earth to check out the strip club we had been told about. She came over to my place and we went through a Hellfire portal, coming out in the woods.

Before we began the walk through town, we made sure to hide our horns and eyes. Our eyes, though they weren't like Incubi where the sclera is black, were very clearly not human. Mine are a yellow-green and snake-like. Lucielle's were more amber orange with the snake pupil. She put in contacts and I just wore sunglasses to hide my eyes; I'm allergic to the contacts. We were able to use magic to hide our horns. Our type of demon doesn't have a lot of magical power, so that's pretty much all we can do.

We walked through the town, and it was around noon before we got to the shady part of the city where the club was. And when I say shady, I mean shady. It looked like some place where you would take a dead body and nobody would give you a second glance. The club was one of the larger buildings, though not tall. The flashing pink and gold sign on the front said 'The Palace'.

"Waiiiiiit!" I said, smirking at Lucielle. "I've heard of this place! It's the one with the hot melanistic dude in the ads, right?"

Lucielle chuckled. "Yep! But I've never seen him here before, he must be just a model."

I pouted mockingly. "Too bad."

Lucielle chuckled. "Yeah, I know," she agreed. "There are a lot of really attractive dancers here regardless, though. But we aren't here for that."

I groaned at her. "Why did you have to remind me?" I sighed. Lucielle laughs at me, leading me to the club entrance. The bouncers asked for our IDs, even though we were clearly of age, but it was their job to do so. By the way, I'm 2,411 years old in human years; in demon year measurement, I'm 39. Once we walked inside, the club was a lot nicer than the outside looks. The floor was deep crimson carpet, and once we walked by, there were two hallways of the 'private' rooms, each of the rooms had a deep maroon curtain as a door. There were only four rooms with actual doors. Straight ahead once you get to the main room, there's a hallway that has a sign that says 'AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY' on it. The main room had a bunch of tables and chairs, facing a stage where there were poles set up, so it was obviously where the pole dancers were. Also obvious because there were pole dancers dancing up there right now. There was a bar area as well, to the left of the stage and tables.

Lucielle held my hand and dragged me over to the bar. I ordered a red wine while Lucielle got a vodka, to which I raised an eyebrow at her. "What?" She said, and I chuckled.

"I thought you didn't like strong alcohol?"

Lucielle rolled her eyes. "Fireball is different than vodka! I don't like Fireball."

I chuckled again. Once we got our drinks I spun around in the chair to watch the stage behind us. I elbowed Lucielle and pointed out a male dancer to her, to whom she whistled. I looked around the club absently once the dancers were done, then noticed something that caught my eye.

"Holy shit Lucielle," I elbowed her again. Lucielle gasped a little when she saw what I elbowed her for. A middle-aged looking man in a pretty nice suit was talking to one of the bouncers, I can only assume that he was the owner because he was the only person aside from the bouncers dressed that nicely. But the man wasn't the surprising thing; he was holding the end of a chain leash that was hooked onto a collar around a small Elf's neck.

Now, when I say the Elf was small, I mean he was tiny by Elf standards. Most Highland Elves — as I'm assuming this one was, as he looks like one — are around six to seven feet tall, I've met a few that were almost eight feet tall. This guy looked like he was no taller than five foot five. At most. His hair was a dusty looking light blond, and his skin looked grey-ish pale.

One thing I noticed about him that I've never seen about an Elf is that his eyes were a beautiful turquoise color. Well, they looked like they would be if they weren't the faded color they are. His face was very feminine though, as was his body. His lips and eyes were big and his face was angular and elegant, but the condition his body was in made me very angry. His shoulders were sharp and boney, and his ribs and hip bones were visible. His cheekbones and jaws were sharp too. There couldn't have been any fat on his body at all. He didn't even have thighs or an ass, aside from muscle that I assume was from pole dancing. His long Elven ears were half down, and he didn't look at all happy.

He was dressed up in what I can only describe as semi-covering lingerie. It was black leather-looking short shorts with a fishnet-looking material as a sleeveless shirt that connected to the shorts and the black leather collar around his neck, and he was barefooted. But one thing that made me the most angry was the bandages that were wrapped around his hips and thighs under the clothes, and the numerous faded or fading bruises on his body.

'Looks like there's their domestic abuse charges,' Lucielle said to me mentally. Should probably clear this up: demons can communicate telepathically with people. Dunno why, we just all can.

'What the fuck are they doing to him?' I replied angrily to her telepathically.

'Calm down Ozzie,' Lucielle said. 'We can propose this to Lucifer, and he can deal with the fucker. We don't have any evidence that they did that to the Elf anyway.'

I sighed and chewed my lip forcing myself to look away from the Elf so I stop getting angrier. I thought about it for a couple more minutes though.

'We could ask the guy that's monitoring the doors,' I said. There was a man that was standing in a small tucked away area nearby the bouncers by the doors, that kept occasionally checking in with the bouncers. I noticed that when the manager walked out with the Elf on a leash, the doorman glanced and looked very upset.

Lucielle looked over at the doorman. 'Maybe... he looks upset about the Elf, but it depends on his personality if he would actually say anything, and we know nothing about him so we don't know.'

'Well I think it's worth it to maybe get kicked out of a strip club if it meant that were was a small bit of a possibility that it would actually help him.'

'Why are you so  upset about this Ozzie?... you never seem to get this upset about things like this for other people. No offense.'

'Oh none taken, I'm a horny selfish bitch most of the time. But I'm not sure why I'm so worked up about this... that Elf just looks so miserable.'

Lucielle looked at me, then just looked back at the stage. 'We can come back and try to investigate further, or have one of the Incubi come in and try to get in the back. For now if you want to interrogate the doorman, we should take him back to Hell tonight. Make sure no one can hear of notices that he's missing.'

I nodded at her instead of replying, looking back at the stage as well.

Lucielle and I went back to The Palace around 1 AM, with Barzethomirr. The club was still open, but it was mostly just for the bar and private dances. Barzethomirr had hidden his horns and eyes with magic like we had, but he also had a tail that he had hid. He immediately caught the eyes of every stripper and very soon after had gotten himself a free private dance with about five of them.

Barzethomirr went into one of the rooms to do that while Lucielle and I stationed ourselves at the bar. Once we got our drinks the bartender went into the back again.

"How is it coming?" I said casually to Lucielle, as if we were making normal conversation.

"I'm almost done," she replied. She pulled her phone out and checked it; she was currently in the process of overriding The Palace's security system to hack their cameras so we could get into the back.

"It's done," she said after another minute. We waited for a couple more minutes until the lights on the cameras that indicated that they were recording turned off, then we stood up and quickly made our way to the staff corridor, slipping behind the sign and getting around the corner so that when the cameras went to normal again they wouldn't see us. We had already checked that there weren't any cameras in the back before this.

We walked through the long hallway that followed, then at the end turned left away from the private restroom on the right side. When we turned I stopped and Lucielle let out a gasp.

"What. The fuck is going on here."