prologue
THE COLOR red seemed inescapable. Everywhere he looked, it was somewhere, no matter how small. It was on the street lights, on that billboard, in that guy's hair. Everywhere.
He wanted to hate it. He wanted to destroy everything red ever, burn it until it was nothing but cold, dark ash.
Red haunted him, left him gasping for air, his body aching. Visions of red-dripping on the floor, splattering on his cheek flashed in his mind, taunting him. A silent reminder.
You're never getting rid of me. Us.
And as much as he hated that color, it gave him a strange, fucked up feeling of comfort. It was, after all, one of the only constants in his life. The color red was what gave him, gave everyone, life.
(He was working on figuring out if that was a good thing. Jury's still out.)
Artemis had heard tales of the Devil of Hell's Kitchen. Who hadn't? Even then, red was inescapable.
The color of blood, some had said. Like he was some kind of creature, and not just a guy. A man, a human, like they all were.
Red connected them all. Even the Devil.
He tilted his head, his grip on the file in his hand tightening as his thumb grazed the logo on the upper right corner. The red ink on the cover of folder stared back at him, mocking him, making his own red simmer. He didn't have to look closely to read the words; he already knew them by heart.
HELLHOUND
WARNING: DO NOT COPY THIS FILE. DO NOT DISPOSE OF THIS FILE.
SECURITY LEVEL 7 OR ABOVE REQUIRED.
He took the lighter from his pocket, and with a flash of red, the folder began to burn away, left in a wastebasket to crumble into ash. Red, then nothing.
♘
A few blocks down, a man tilted his head to the side, listening.
Something was burning.
It wasn't a new sensation, but an odd feeling settled over his bones, putting him just over the edge.
But there were bigger problems, more important ones. So he let the smell of smoke and the sound of the new heartbeat go.
For now.
Bigger problems, he thought to himself as he straightened before leaping off the edge of the building he was on. Gracefully landing on the next, he repeated the process, a devil on the hunt.
♘
wc: 397
status: edited
Welcome to Hellhound! I hope you like it! The prologue is short, I know, but the coming chapters are (hopefully) going to be much longer.
Thanks for reading!