Hell Hound Blues: Prologue

General Warning: This story contains a serial killer. He will be killing people in a variety of ways. However it will *never* be sexual and the victims will *never* be children. This warning will be at the top of every post. I will include chapter warnings as appropriate.

Chapter Warning: Two violent deaths in this chapter.

 

Prologue

He should be deemed by fate to be a hero. He should have lived up to the names his parents bestowed upon him. Warren Greer. Warren: guard. Greer: Guard. He should have been at least a prison guard or parole officer if not a proper police constable or even detective or maybe a military man. However, Warren was none of those things. Warren Greer was, rather happily, a serial killer.

Why was he a serial killer might you ask? Endless number so of studies seem to say that he had been abused as a child or was powerless in his childhood or had poor role models or even just a weak moment of lacking moral fiber that set him down a path of darkness. After all the road to hell is paved with good intentions as we have all been warned numerous times.

But Warren was none of these things. He’d had a good childhood. A good education and a decent career path laid out in front of him and he threw it all away the moment he went to a bar at the end of exams his senior year of college. It wasn’t a bar that catered to the college crowd which was why he went there. he hated the college crowd bars with a passion so much vomit and glitter.

It was in that bar where he met his destiny you might say. There he was in his favorite corner booth hidden by the shadows drinking his second scotch of the night when the only other patrons got into a fight and one killed the other. The bartender had called the police but it was too late for the hapless victim who landed facing Warren’s secluded little corner. As the life left the other mans eyes Warren had an epiphany. This was what was missing. This is what would keep him from being bored.

It became Warren’s quest. To see the light fade in people’s eyes. To make it go inch by slow inch.

Fast forward to the present day. Warren has had a good life. he passed all of his senior exams and started down the career path set out before him. Married a tolerable woman, had the expected pretty children, learned to play golf, and laugh at his bosses jokes, got promoted, and all the while perfect the craft of his secret hobby. Now more than 20 years later he had reached to the peak of his craft and it was frustrating to say the least.
——————-
Warren whistled cheerfully as he walked toward his car in the predawn hours of 5 am. He was walking along side a jogging path as had for ever morning in the past three weeks dressed as if he were getting ready for a long morning commute. As the jogger dressed all in red began to pass him, Warren struck. He jabbed a needle filled with a precisely measured dose of a fast acting sedative into the man’s neck, pressed the plunger and covered the man’s mouth with his other hand as the man began to call out and held it there until the man slumped to the ground.

he then removed the syringe, recapped it and put it in his shirt pocket and proceeded to drag the dead weight of the jogger into the trunk of his car where he manacled the man’s hands tightly together and his feet with a small length of chain between them.

fifteen minutes later because of the quiet streets he reached his destination. A currently abandoned warehouse in the shipping district near the oil storage depot. he drove into the warehouse and shut the bay door behind him with a press of a button on his key chain.

He parked his car, walked over to what he liked to call his command center and locked down the building. No sense not to be paranoid. he went to his gun safe,  unlocked it and pulled out his shotgun, loaded it, and the shut and relocked the gun safe. He walked back around to the back of his car, pressed another button and the trunk popped open.

“I know that you are awake,” he called. “I have a loaded shotgun pointed at you. Hop on out.”

There was a scrambling noise and then the jogger used his torso to lift the trunk lid up further and he rolled out of the trunk and onto the concrete pad below.

“Stand up,” Warren ordered.

The man rolled to his feet with no little amount of grace.

“Very good.”

Warren cocked his head to the left. “Hmm somebody is very quiet this morning. Why so shy?”

The man in red just looked at Warren with a wry expression on his face. “Would it matter if I said anything?”

“Well, no,” said Warren. “But by this time most people are yelling, screaming or crying. You on the other had are totally silent where many others are begging. I have to ask. Why?”

“Would it help me in the least?”

“Nope.”

“That would be why then.”

“Methinks you are a fatalist.”

“Methinks you sound like an idiot. Also I am a realist. You have obviously planned this well and seem very experienced at it. This means my chances of escaping are very small.”

“So no begging for mercy or pleas to think of your family?”

“Why should I waste my breath?”

“Why indeed?”

Warren jerked his head to the left towards his shop. “Head through the door on the left.”

“Your left? Or my left?”

“now you are just being a smart ass. Move!”

The jogger headed into the room and blanched at what he saw inside. The floor, walls, and ceiling were made of tile. The were drains in the floor that were incrusted in what looked like dried blood. the walls row upon row of ominous looking yet gleaming medical instruments and power tools. Coiled in one corner of the room was a run of the mill garden hose. Rising from the center of the room like an altar was the kind of steel table one would find in a morgue. Next to it was a heart monitor like one would find in a hospital. All in all it painted a chilling picture to the man in red.

Warren who had followed at a respectable distance tossed a small key to the man in red.

“Walk to the far corner, undo your shackles, strip, get on the table and lock your feet and one arm into the restraints,” he ordered.

The jogger moved to comply. As he undid his undid his shackles, an alarm sounded.

Both men looked towards the sound. It was coming from the control center. Warren cursed. He cursed again when he saw the smirk on the joggers face.

“Empty your pockets.”

Out came a set of keys and an iPhone.

Warren sighed. “it’s always the little things that trip you up.” Then he shot the man in the knees. The boom of the shotgun was deafening in the small room, but the man in red’s scream of pain as he fell to the floor managed to drown it out.

Warren left the room, shut the door and locked it. Still carrying his shotgun, he went to the control system. There on the security camera monitors were the worst possible scenario. The Met had sent several constables. He could see them trying to figure out the best way to get into the warehouse. He briefly rubbed his fingers of his free hand over the amulet he had hidden under his shirt. Then he pulled it from around his neck with his free hand,  and walked back to the room where he had left the jogger.

He unlocked and opened the door wide. The man in red was still lying where he had fallen. Warren sighed, “You just had to spoil my fun. We were going to spend such a lovely time together you and I.”

He propped the shotgun well away from the man and then kicked him off one of the drains, pried up the cover, dropped the amulet down it, and replaced the cover. He then hoisted the man onto the table, walked to wall and pulled off his favorite knife. He then slit the throat of the jogger, keeping one ear on the sound of a battering ram hitting the door next the bay door. Bathing his hands in the blood pouring from the man who was now red all over he calmly walked to the wall by the door. The only wall without tool racks attached to it. He quickly inscribed a circle and scrawled symbols in and around it gracelessly having to go back to the body more than once to get more blood. Then when the whole thing was finished, he made a palm print right in the middle.

Stepping back he watched as the circle on the wall glow briefly. Then he went to the the hose in the corner and sprayed his handiwork off the wall and down the drain. Hearing the door beginning to give he wiped his hands dry on his pant and picked up the  shotgun once more and waited.

He did not have to wait for long to hear the sound he had been waiting for. The door to the warehouse finally gave way and the Met poured in. Then the shouting began.

“Put the weapon down, and raise your hands!”

He calmly ignored the orders and quickly raised the shotgun and got off a single blast before being shot several times himself. He fell to the ground and as the room began to fade out, a figure began to fade in.

He was dressed all in black and had one of those stickers that say “My Name is” on his chest. According to the sticker his name was Clyde. Clyde looked expressionlessly at Warren.

“Come on then, no time like the present,” said Clyde. Warren looked at Clyde and smiled.

“I suppose not,” he agreed pleasantly. “Will the man in the other room be joining us?”

Clyde frowned. “No. Now follow me.”

Warren smirked, “Whatever you say.”