About thirty miles east of Columbia, Missouri on Interstate 70 was where John Blaze found himself as the heavens opened up like a fusillade of dark gray cannonballs. Booming thunder echoed from the dark sky and rolled out across the flat landscape that extended in all directions, and a few seconds later the rain was falling in cold, heavy sheets. The asphalt grew slick with rainwater, and Blaze knew better than to tempt fate by risking a two-wheeled hydroplane. He pulled his motorcycle off the highway, rolling to a stop on the muddy gravel shoulder, and climbed off. Turning the collar of his blue-black leather jacket up against the inhospitable elements, he wandered several yards into the empty field running along the stretch of Interstate.

In the days since he had left Gabriel College, Blaze had spoken to Dr. Sutton by telephone a few times, but the professor’s research into supernatural afflictions had yielded little new information that could help Dan Ketch. Blaze’s brother would continue to exist in his tormented state, imprisoned in the makeshift dimensional pocket Dr. Strange had fashioned, while Blaze looked for answers.

So Blaze had ridden west, continuing to respond to some instinctual need for constant motion. Whether it was an unconscious pursuit of some ultimate destination, or simply an aversion to standing still, Blaze couldn’t say. Nor could he swear to the true wellspring of the feelings that impelled him down the road; they might be the contents of his own heart, or they might belong to Noble Kale, or they might originate deep in the ancient power that was the Spirit of Vengeance itself.

An eighteen-wheeler rumbled swiftly past on I-70, sending up whitish-gray sprays of rainwater and displacing enough air in its wake to cause Blaze’s bike to rock precariously against its kickstand. Blaze took another few steps farther from the highway. The rain continued to fall relentlessly, and the last thing Blaze needed was to be crushed by a speeding, out of control car or truck which slewed off the road. The odds of that kind of accident happening at the exact mile marker where Blaze had pulled over were admittedly small, but John Blaze’s life was full of improbabilities. A bolt of lightning flooded the sodden skies with angry white light at that instant, as if to punctuate Blaze’s thoughts.

As the accompanying thunder rolled across the plain, Blaze noticed a thin column of smoke. At first he thought it was a far-off object burning after being struck by lightning, but after a moment he realized that the smoke was much closer, and hanging inexplicably in mid-air, confusing Blaze’s initial perception of distance. The long tendril of smoke gained in volume, elongating and thickening in empty space, and the smell of it reached Blaze: a deathly sulfurous essence that he knew all too well as heralding the imminent arrival of a demonic entity.

Blaze crossed his arms and waited. This could not be a coincidence, he was certain. A demon manifesting so close to his location must be looking for him, and was making no effort to approach stealthily.

The smoke column, now eight feet tall and less than ten feet away from Blaze, split from the bottom up like the parting of dark curtains, and almost immediately began to dissipate in the wind. Where the noxious cloud had separated, a creature stood with rain hissing against its crimson fur. The creature was barely more than five feet tall, and resembled a humanoid rat except for its coloring, as well as the fact that its snout had been replaced by a black beak like a horned owl’s.

The rat-like demon took two steps forward before genuflecting before Blaze. On bended knee, with beady black eyes downcast, the demon said, “My liege, I must speak with you at once.”

Blaze tried to conceal his surprise at being addressed in such a manner, a feat he accomplished primarily by saying nothing for several seconds. Another bolt of lightning and echo of thunder ultimately prompted him to say, “I’m listening.”

The demon’s eyes flashed upward with a hard glitter, and it hissed, “Not you, mortal. I must speak to Noble Kale.” Then the rodent head bowed again as the demon added, “The true sovereign of Hell.”

“Release me, then, Blaze,” Noble Kale demanded from his internal resting place within his descendant.

“I don’t …” Blaze began to think in response.

“COWARD!” Kale roared. “I know what you fear. You cling to the belief that you can control me, and you tremble at the thought of losing that control. You convince yourself that if you allow me egress only when the Spirit of Vengeance demands, then you retain some final power over me, and may use me toward your own ends. I am not a tool!”

“That’s debatable,” Blaze thought sardonically.

“There is no debate!” Kale rejoined, missing the ironic insult entirely. “Relinquish your control … your illusion of control ... so that we both may hear what this envoy of Hell has come to say!”

“You know this demon?” Blaze asked his ancestor warily.

“I know of its kind,” Kale answered impatiently, “the demons which plagued the now-extinct race of the Short Teeth.”

“So it’s, what … species-specific?” Blaze asked.

“Of course,” Kale snapped. “Every race has its demons.”

The rain and wind had already chilled Blaze’s body, but the dream-echoes of Kale’s words crystallized like ice in Blaze’s heart. In that instant Blaze became resolute in what he would do, or at least what he would attempt.

Small flames, no larger than those which might dance atop the wicks of votive candles, spilled from Blaze’s eyes, which had darkened to abyssal shadows. The skin of Blaze’s face grew tighter, outlining every angle of his skull, and threatened to recede completely into the bone. His lips all but disappeared, exposing his teeth in a sepulchral grin which open to give a single command – “Speak!” – in the voice of Noble Kale.

“My liege!” the Short Teeth demon responded with obvious relief. “I was sent to warn you … war is coming! Already attacks of demon against demon have begun, and they grow more brazen every day!”

“Internecine struggles in Hell are nothing new,” Kale replied evenly; if he felt any frustration or resentment in only being allowed to see through Blaze’s eyes and speak through Blaze’s mouth, while Blaze held sway over the rest of his body, Kale gave no indication.

“Forgive me, my liege, but it is different this time,” the demon pressed on. “This war will consume all of demonkind, with unimaginable spoils for the victors, and oblivion for the vanquished!”

“Unimaginable spoils?” Kale repeated skeptically. “Beyond supremacy over the realms of Hell? What spoils?”

“I … I do not know, my liege,” the demon admitted, gnashing its beak bitterly. “The demons of the Short Teeth are not … exalted among the denizens of Hell. We believe the more powerful conclaves of demons were approached and promised great reward if they could deracinate others. But we do not know who made these promises, or why. It is all my kind can do to battle for our survival, and thus I come to you to beg your intervention.”

“Your need is plain,” Noble Kale observed, “yet I fail to perceive why I should bestir myself. As Lord of Hell, I owe my subjects nothing. It is demonkind who are in thrall to me.”

“Oh, that’s real nice,” John Blaze muttered mentally. “Some benevolent dictator you are.”

“Quiet, whelp!” Noble Kale snapped at his host, and Blaze’s psyche nearly recoiled into the dark, purple-webbed recesses of his mindscape. The configuration of the two beings at that moment was akin to the two men standing shoulder to shoulder in the Ghost Rider’s skull, and Kale’s retort was a poisonous snake hiss inches from Blaze’s face.

“My liege,” the Short Teeth demon was saying, “The portents for this war are of the gravest nature. I know well that you care not if one faction of demons slays another, or even if this happens several times over. I come to you with a warning that, should you stand by, you may lose your kingdom entire. Hell will consume itself utterly in a war that will only end when the last two of your thralls disembowel one another atop a mountain of a million demon corpses.”

Blaze’s jack-o-lantern eyes flared intensely. “You presume too much, little demon,” Noble Kale growled ominously. “For the insolence to speak such suggestions of ruin, I should kill you myself.”

“No need for that!” a chittering voice announced with sadistic glee, as a pair of brown tarsal claws streaked with blood burst through the rat-demon’s chest. The Short Teeth emissary gurgled as its black eyes went wide with agony, and then its red-furred body slumped forward and slid off the claws, revealing the killer that had stolen up from behind: a mottled brown and black cockroach, rearing back on two of its six legs to a height of nearly three feet.

At the sight of the demon’s blood on the cockroach’s chitinous appendage, Blaze could feel his tenuous control slipping away. The fire in his eyes spread across his entire face, incinerating flesh to reveal the bonewhite skull beneath. Rain hissed against the corona of flames wreathing his cranium, and once again lightning and thunder filled the tomb-gray skies.

“You interrupted my audience, pestilent one,” Ghost Rider bellowed, summoning forth the serpentine chains that writhed, lifelike, in his skeletal hands. “For that I will claim a most personal vengeance!”

“Your time is passing, and new powers are arising,” the cockroach sneered in response, while growing larger and larger before Ghost Rider’s eyes, “and your power is no match for mine, Rider!” As the insect gained size, it also acquired characteristics that betrayed its origins in Hell. Wickedly sharp thorns grew from the segments of its legs, its antennae thickened and curled like gigantic ram’s horns, and its wings became scalloped and ragged. A blinding flash of lightning washed out the field entirely, and when shape and color returned to the world the demonic cockroach was over forty feet tall, and throwing itself forward onto all six legs.

Ghost Rider dove to the side as the massive roach crashed to the ground, echoed by thunder, and barely avoided being crushed under the belly of its exoskeleton. The cockroach emitted a nightmarish shriek, and scuttled toward the highway. As it passed by Blaze’s motorcycle, it kicked out one mesothoracic appendage and sent the bike flying across the field. Then the cockroach was oriented with the highway lane and running west, and revealing yet another of its supernatural powers:

The demon was fast.

In a moment it was an arthropod blur in the rain, tearing down Interstate 70 on six treetrunk legs. Ghost Rider splayed his fingers and unleashed a torrent of hellfire that cohered into the orange-red shape of a flaming motorcycle between his legs, and was roaring after the cockroach demon to the accompaniment of thunder and lightning overhead.

The gargantuan cockroach was running at close to a hundred miles an hour, and Ghost Rider leaned forward into the wind and driving rain to catch up, the tires of the hellfire cycle spinning like angry, mystical suns. Ghost Rider drew close to the demon’s quivering hindgut, and flicked out a length of chain alight with flames. The metallic whip grazed the cockroach, but did no damage, instead spurring the demon to scurry faster still. Ghost Rider gritted his bared teeth and followed.

The demonic roach loomed behind a BMW, and the car’s driver swerved from the right lane into the left in an attempt to get out of the monstrosity’s path. The BMW cut in front of an Escalade, which slammed on its brakes and protested with a long bray of its horn, before clipping the rear bumper of the BMW. The car spun out, cutting across the right lane again between the demonic cockroach and Ghost Rider. The Spirit of Vengeance threw his weight hard to the left, zigzagging around the spinning BMW and settling back into pursuit of his insectile quarry.

Ghost Rider was preparing another attack with his chain when the demonic cockroach suddenly jumped forward, hurdling over a Winnebago directly ahead. Again Ghost Rider swerved to avoid a collision, this time tearing all the way across the left hand lane and ending up on the low concrete median separating the two westbound lanes of I-70 from their eastbound counterparts. Ghost Rider popped the front wheel of his hellfire cycle into the air and accelerated forward.

The cockroach bolted over the blacktop and drew even with a Greyhound bus, edging alongside it. Metal sheared off the bus’s exterior under the pointed tips of the thorns running along the demon’s legs, and the bus wobbled on its tires until another nudge from the cockroach tipped it over. The bus skidded along the concrete median, sending showers of sparks and leaving a trail of broken glass in Ghost Rider’s path as it inevitably slowed to a crashing halt. Ghost Rider drifted onto the westbound highway again, passing close enough to the bus that its undercarriage left grease stains on the left shoulder and knee of his riding leathers.

“Dammit, Kale!” Blaze raged from his psychic confines. “That bus was full of innocent people! Whatever justice you expect to get from one demon for killing another, you damn well better get it soon or I will force you back under right here in the middle of the highway, even if it makes me roadkill!”

“I seek vengeance, not justice, and as always you do not understand the depth of the abyss between the two,” Noble Kale retorted.

Before the Ghost Rider’s internal argument could continue, the demon roach scurried over a set of abandoned railroad tracks that crossed the Interstate. With blindingly fast mulekicks of its hindmost tarsal claws, the cockroach tore a section of the tracks free of the macadam and twisted the steel rails and wooden ties into a warped fence bisecting the highway.

Cars and trucks behind him began to skid on the wet highway surface as they slammed on their brakes, but the Ghost Rider waved a hand at the upended railroad tracks and sent a column of hellfire toward the barrier. Steel melted into runny slag and wood was burnt to crisp ashes, as a fog of steam blanketed the roadway. Ghost Rider steered his cycle into the cloud, and emerged on the other side with a burst of speed.

The demonic cockroach leapt sideways, plowing headlong into the oncoming eastbound traffic on the other side of the median. Tires squealed and horns wailed, and the sounds of crumpling metal echoed louder than the thunder, sometimes the high tintinnabulation of fender-on-fender impact, sometimes the deep resonance of an engine pulverized beneath one of the demon’s swiftly striding claws.

Ghost Rider’s hellfire cycle roared and laid down a fiery trail as it rocketed toward the fleet beast. Ghost Rider stood astride the infernal mount and jumped it from the surface of the highway onto the carapace of the demon’s abdomen. He rolled up the roach’s back, between its wings, arriving at the highest point of the thorax and allowing the flames of the hellfire cycle to fade to nothingness. The links of the Ghost Rider’s incandescent chain sang in the rain as he whirled it over his burning skull, and then the metal line darted downward and wrapped itself around the demonic cockroach’s neck.

Ghost Rider yanked on the length of chain in his arms and forced the demon to alter its course; in a heartbeat the leviathan roach was running perpendicularly away from the highway, into the grass. Ghost Rider waited until he had ridden the cockroach a good hundred yards away from the Interstate, and then snapped the chain upward tautly, like a metal hangman’s noose. The roach-demon’s head popped off its prothorax. Its monstrous body staggered a few more steps forward, shuddered, and collapsed.

Ghost Rider leapt down from the demon’s carapace and stalked through the wet grass. Soon he came upon the severed head of the cockroach, grabbed it by one of its horn-like antennae, and lifted it from the mud. The demon head screeched angrily but helplessly as the Spirit of Vengeance stared into its glittering compound eyes.

“Now let us discuss why the children of Hell are so eager to kill their brethren,” Noble Kale intoned gravely, his edict punctuated by lightning and thunder sharp enough to crack the heavens.