Grimm Awakening by Bryan Smith

within another fifty yards of the wall. They’d left the last section of paved road behind by now. At this distance, Jack could feel the wall pulling at him. He stumbled a step toward it, the suction it exerted was almost too powerful to resist. Lucien extracted a timepiece from an inner pocket of the jacket that had replaced his Hellpack blazer. It was a gold watch on a chain, a gift from Theodore Grimm. The most accurate timepiece in all of creation, according to the old man.
    The hellhound flipped the watch open. He nodded, his expression grim. “Almost time. If the portal doesn’t open in less than a minute, we’re fucked.”
    Jack grunted. “Thanks for breaking it to me gently.”
    Lucien didn’t reply, choosing instead to track the progress of the watch’s relentlessly progressing second hand. Jack heard the ticking like the timer on a bomb. Despite the mighty roar of the thunderwall, each tick reverberated in his ears like the blast of a cannon. He closed his eyes, muttered a silent prayer, and waited for the doom that seemed inevitable.
    Then Lucien said, “There it is!”
    Jack opened his eyes and looked. He saw it materializing just above the ground to their right, the same shimmering portal Andy had coaxed him through just twenty-four hours earlier. Or one just like it, at least. Jack’s heart thudded. It was all he could do not to take off at a run for the portal. He didn’t even know whether he should resist that impulse.
    He cocked an eyebrow at the hellhound. “Now?”
    Lucien nodded. “Yes.”
    The two men, human and hellhound, began to walk toward the portal.
    Then something changed. Jack could feel it in his bones and at the back of his skull, in every weeping pore of his weary body. Something was wrong . The ground rumbled beneath their feet. Lucien’s eyes widened with alarm and he yelled, “ Run! ”
    But Jack was already running.
    Lucien’s voice was brittle with terror: “Something’s coming! Something’s trying to stop us!”
    As if in answer to the hellhound’s cries, the sky darkened behind the portal and something began to materialize in front of their only means of escape. Jack convulsed as a wave of cold swept through him. The desert storm humidity of before was gone. Jack felt like a naked man stumbling across a frozen tundra. The thing taking shape before them was like a black slash wound against the flesh of the world. Its curled tail rotated like a twister about to touch down. Its eyes were red and malevolent. There was deeper darkness within the darkness that resembled a grinning mouth, a mouth that looked wide enough to open up and swallow them whole.
    A terrible voice that seemed to obliterate everything else spoke inside their heads. “Such audacity.” Its laugh was like the sound of an earthquake ripping earth asunder. Jack thought his head might explode. “I am fear itself. I am hate and I am murder. I am war, famine, and disease. I am everything that powers your nightmares. I am the bringer of the ultimate blood cleansing and my time is coming. You will not stop me. You cannot stop me.”
    That laugh again. A bomb detonating inside their heads. Jack clamped his hands over his ears and sank to his knees. He sobbed and hot tears spilled down his face. He thought of the gun in his shoulder holster and despaired. Bullets would be as nothing against this awesome force.
    It spoke again: “Would-be usurpers. Plastic heroes. You amuse me. As do the meddlings of the old man. I will deal with him in time. As for you, go forth and attempt redemption. It is useless. You are of no concern to me. When my time on earth comes, your suffering will surpass the suffering of any soul. It will be endless.”
    Then it was gone.
    Jack needed several moments just to catch his breath. His eyes were clenched shut, but he heard Lucien panting next to him. He managed at last to unscrew his eyes and blinked at a landscape devoid of devils. The freezing cold was gone, the heat sweeping back in.