John Blaze's entire body hurt, with the freshly stinging pain of sliding across the Utah hardpan after a hundred-mile-an-hour motorcycle wipeout overlaying the bone-deep ache of weeks of constant travel and combat. From the dull throbbing behind his eyes to the grating burn across his abraded shoulders to the weariness in his very soul, all that he wanted was to lay on the ground in some semblance of rest. But the inexorable approach of a lumbering mummified corpse impelled him to rise up from the dust. Blaze rolled awkwardly onto his left side, guided mainly by the fact that his left hip hurt slightly less than the right, and levered the top half of his body up off the rocky ground. The process was slow and labored, but fortunately that pace matched the lurching gait of the linen-wrapped ghoul bearing down on Blaze.

Just as Blaze was about to push himself to his feet, a weight of several hundred pounds crashed into him from behind, driving sharp claws into Blaze's back. Blaze sprawled across the ground again, squirming to shift from his belly to his back as the weight settled atop him and the claws flexed maliciously deeper. Leather, skin and muscle tore as Blaze rotated beneath his attacker, until he could look up at the beast – the demon, there could be no question of it being anything else – above him.

The demon looked like a lion, or a savagely twisted mockery that owed its basis to a lion’s essential form. Four-legged, with a sinuous but strong body, a long tail, a vaguely feline head and a shaggy mane, the hellspawn was larger than any great cat, nearly as tall as a horse, and its body was sheathed in a leathery, scalloped exoskeleton. Where a lion would have ears, the demon boasted taurine horns, and its tail was broad and crocodilian. The lion-demon’s entire body was black, except for its cunning amber eyes, its blood-red forked tongue, and its gleaming white claws.

Blaze brought up both boots as hard as he could, driving the steel toes into the underbelly of the lion-demon, which merely grunted in response, keeping its weight bearing down on the claws now piercing Blaze’s chest. The lion-demon opened its mouth wide, wider than should have been physically possible, revealing double-rows of fangs that would easily sever a limb when they snapped shut again.

A gaunt but muscular arm in weathered wrappings shot into Blaze’s field of vision, and bandaged fingers knotted themselves into the lion-demon’s tangled black mane. The mummy hauled the hellspawn off Blaze, lifting it overhead and slamming it down to the hardpan on its back in one motion. The lion-demon roared in outrage, righted itself, and hurtled through the air at the mummy.

The mummy had barely crossed its forearms in a protective brace when the lion-demon’s maw met the defensive gesture and the beast clamped its fangs onto the mummy’s limbs. Instead of snapping the corpse’s arms like twigs, the lion-demon found its jaws straining as if against solid stone. The lion-demon’s rear legs scrabbled for balance against the desert floor, but the mummy leaned into its opponent and stepped forward, forcing the hellspawn onto its back and kneeling astride its chest. The lion-demon growled madly as it tried without success to bite through the desiccated flesh of the mummy, but the ancient warrior remained eerily silent as it drew one arm free of the beast’s fangs and drove that hand into the fiend’s chest. The lion-demon’s growls swelled to cries of agony, and were stopped with a final hissing gurgle as the mummy tore the demon’s ichorous heart free from its body.

Blaze had finally risen to his feet in the time it had taken for the mummy to slay the lion-demon, and had also assessed the few facts the situation had presented: the black chimera was a demon, and had tried to kill Blaze; the mummy was not, and had not. Monstrous appearances aside, the mummy appeared to be an ally for the moment.
And John Blaze knew a thing or two about monstrous appearances.

Another lion-demon prowled into view, its reptilian tail twitching as its yellow eyes flickered back and forth from the mummy to Blaze. Blaze resigned himself to what would come next, as he loosened his focused grip on his own awareness. Relaxing the mental and spiritual vigilance that allowed him to maintain total control of his body, he felt the forceful personality of his ancestor Noble Kale rising up just as he felt the physical reality of his flesh and blood seeping away into nothingness, replaced by bleached bone and hellfire. The flaming skull of the Ghost Rider turned its depthless gaze on the approaching lion-demon.

Incited to predatory frenzy by the appearance of the Ghost Rider, the lion-demon ran at full speed toward the embodied Spirit of Vengeance, kicking up clouds of desert dust with its talons. Ghost Rider assumed a wide gunfighter stance and pointed a single finger at the lion-demon. A jet of hellfire erupted like dragon’s breath from Ghost Rider’s fingertip, rushing at the lion-demon with a fury as if a filament of reality itself were burning. A moment later a vaguely leonine cloud of ashes hung suspended in mid-air before being scattered by the wind.

“VENGEANCE!” Ghost Rider bellowed. “This is what the Spirit of Vengeance can do when unfettered by a weak host!”
No sooner had the words left the fleshless mouth of Ghost Rider than the hellfire-laurelled skull shook as if banishing an unpleasant vision. “Demon killing may be necessary under the circumstances, but insulting me is not,” the more earthly voice of John Blaze emerged from Ghost Rider’s pale visage, replacing the crackling timbre of Noble Kale.
Ghost Rider crossed the hardpan to extend a gloved hand to the bandage-shrouded figure. “John Blaze,” he introduced himself.

“N’Kantu,” the mummy rumbled, slowly but firmly accepting Blaze’s handshake.

“You seem to be demon hunting, too,” Ghost Rider said, prompting a nod from the mummy. “Any idea why tracking them seems to have led us both here?” To this, the mummy could only shake its head ponderously. “Well, you and me against a hundred thousand spawn of the pits doesn’t really strike me as the best odds ever,” Ghost Rider continued, “but we might as well give it everything we’ve got. Come with me.”

Ghost Rider strode toward John Blaze’s motorcycle, which lay on its side like an abandoned toy. The rearview mirrors had snapped off, one tailpipe was askew, and the chrome surfaces had been heavily scratched and dented, but overall the bike had survived the crash remarkably intact. Ghost Rider reached under the motorcycle’s seat and pulled the shotgun out of its cradle, then tossed it to the mummy ambling a few paces behind. “Everything we’ve got includes all the firepower we can carry,” Ghost Rider explained. N’Kantu cradled the shotgun knowingly, indicating that he had at least seen one used before by pulling the pump handle and chambering a round.

Ghost Rider followed the dark, wild skidmarks back along route 191 to the spot where Blaze had lost control of the bike, at which point he stopped short as if suddenly rooted to the asphalt. Ghost Rider raised his gloves and pushed against the seemingly empty air; angry scarlet blossoms of light radiated outward and resisted Ghost Rider’s probing hands.

“A powerful one-way barrier,” the disembodied voice of Noble Kale observed, as if Blaze himself did not understand the phenomenon. “Although this place seems too insignificant to merit such potent wards.”

“Seems?” Blaze asked his ancestor. “You mean you don’t know for certain if this area has any mystical significance?”

“Look around you,” Kale commanded disdainfully. “Even Nature herself has forsaken this barren land. This is lifeless stone slowly decaying into dust, nothing more.”

“Yes, I see that,” Blaze rejoined. He was speaking aloud, as if talking to himself, and if the fact that a self-aware mummy could overhear his half of the conversation concerned him in any way, he gave no outward sign. “But was it always that way, a thousand years ago, or twenty thousand, or fifty? For all I know every pebble underfoot here used to be part of a giant demonic idol or a sentient evil castle or something, smited and smashed a couple of ice ages ago, part of the secret history of demons, how the hell would I know? You’re the one who claims to be the expert on all things the King of Hell should know. You tell me, Kale! Tell me!”

For the first time in months, months that felt like eons, as John Blaze turned his attention inward, to the root of his fusion with Noble Kale, he heard nothing. Blaze had expended near-constant force of will tuning out Kale’s never-ending barrage of noises within the confines of his subconscious, invective and insults and wordless protestations in the form of seething growls and strangled, impatient snorts. Now, however, a trembling silence reigned, fraught with amplified tension.

Finally, Kale’s voice sounded in the dark core of Blaze’s inner being, tinged with some note that might have been grudging respect. “Perhaps there is a secret past to this desolation. Perhaps. If so, it is unknown to me. I know the cradles of countless fiend-worshipping cults, of entire demon-nurtured civilizations. I know the locales of myriad intersections between the dark nether realms and the world of man. I know the final resting places of abyssal lineages almost beyond number. But this place is meaningless … to me.”

The sepulchral skull of the Ghost Rider nodded within its nimbus of flame. “That’s good enough for me, Kale,” Blaze stated. “I doubt this place has any particular relevance at all. In fact, my gut tells me that it was chosen precisely because it’s so isolated and insignificant. Someone did choose it, though. Someone who wanted to corral demons in one place, a place where the gathering would go unnoticed. I just had to be sure I wasn’t missing some other connection.”

“And I have convinced you of that?” Kale asked.

“Yeah,” Blaze agreed. “Any answers to who and why are going to be found in the here and now.”

“And how will you find those answers?” Kale demanded, the old challenging impatience returning to the ancient voice.

“This is the edge of the barrier,” Blaze said, turning his back on the invisible ward. “We head for the middle.” He raised both his hands and hellfire rained down on the blacktop, crimson tongues of flame rapidly coalescing in the form of a burning motorcycle. Ghost Rider mounted his conveyance and slowly rolled onward, empty eyes scanning the vista ahead, while the living mummy N’Kantu kept pace on foot beside him, Blaze’s shotgun braced on his rotted linen-draped shoulder.

---

Roxanne Simpson Blaze felt as if she were living in a dream, specifically the unraveling ending of a nightmare, the moments just before wakefulness when the inherent illogic of being forced to go back to high school or trying to escape a house with no doors and windows forced itself on the mind and frayed the dream material until it split and gave way to the familiar scenery of a darkened bedroom. But she had felt that way for days, or possibly weeks, and the dream had not ended, nor had she found herself tangled in blankets and pillows and the reassuring trappings of reality.

Instead, she found herself in the high desert, standing atop a naturally carved stone arch in the midst of a landscape devoid of any signs of civilization in all directions. Amidst the boulders and jagged crevasses below, shadowy forms moved with inhuman but questing intelligence. Beside Roxanne, the old woman stood transfixed, peering at something Roxanne herself could not make out.

“He is here,” the crone hissed. “I had almost begun to believe he would not find his way to the Rite of Megiddo, and yet he is already here, before it is even begun.”

“Who’s here? And where is here?” Roxanne asked, disoriented, feeling the dream-like sluggishness once again. “You said this was Megiddo but that doesn’t mean anything to me. What’s happening?”

The old woman reluctantly turned toward Roxanne and smiled, but the expression had lost whatever human connection it had previously held. “Megiddo is a battlefield, child,” the witch said. “It is the staging ground for a battle of utter finality. The end of demonkind. The end of fear. I promised you an end to your fear, did I not, my sweet?”

“Yes,” Roxanne agreed, holding fast to any thought which seemed rational, stable and constant.

“And yet you know the one who would prolong your fear … who wants you to cower in abject terror … who wants to prop up his kingdom by preserving the unholy lives of his monstrous subjects …”

“Ghost Rider …” Roxanne finished, her voice dropping as if it had fallen into the Pit.

“He is here, child,” the old woman went on. She wrapped her cold, arthritic fingers around Roxanne’s wrist. “The Spirit of Venegance is here but it will do him no good. I will complete the Rite of Megiddo and the hell-king will lose his kingdom, as all those in thrall to him become less than unliving shades. And once that is done he will have no power over you … no power at all.”

“You said … you said you were going to teach me to defend myself,” Roxanne protested haltingly. “Why…?”

“You shall learn,” the old woman smiled her inhuman rictus again. “And you shall learn, as they say, by doing. You must defend me, child, so that I may complete the Rite. The Spirit of Vengeance will try to stop me, but you must oppose him, and give me time to end this. Protect me, and you will in turn protect yourself.”

“How?”

The old woman gestured at the stone arch beneath their feet. Roxanne looked down and saw a sword lying between them, with a cruciform hilt and a blade nearly five feet long. “Accept this,” the old woman offered, “and accept all that I offer. Serve me, and serve your children and yourself. Take up the sword and guard me, and soon enough you may lay down guarding forevermore.”

Roxanne wanted to argue, wanted more time to think, but found herself slowly dropping to one knee. As she grasped the pommel of the longsword, a green glow enveloped both Roxanne and the weapon, and the old woman laughed with terrifying delight.

---

“I am Herem!” the demon howled. “And my name means total annihilation!”

The boast seemed anything but idle, coming from such a giant monstrosity, human-like from the waist up with bare purple skin encasing rippling muscles, surmounted by the face of a devilish wild man, with a long indigo beard and horns of the same hue. From the waist back the creature the demon most resembled was a lobster, covered in indigo plates and supported by thin segmented legs ending in chitinous tridents. Despite its scuttling underside scraping the ground, the demon’s upper half still rose twice the height of the Ghost Rider.

Ghost Rider was unimpressed. “N’Kantu, blow off another one of his legs,” he suggested.

The living mummy slid the handgrip of the shotgun backwards and forwards, slowly and deliberately, lowered the muzzle to one of the arthropod limbs jutting from the demon’s belly, and pulled the trigger. A black and orange incandescent slug of pure hellfire blasted from the gun’s barrel and shattered the demon’s leg in a spray of broken shell and muck. Herem bellowed in pain and fury, but could not retaliate against the mummy; the demon’s upper body was restrained in loops of Ghost Rider’s burning steel chains, and the Spirit of Vengeance held the end of the chain in an unbreakable grip, a grip which extended mystically up and around Herem as well.

“You seem like a smart demon,” Ghost Rider allowed, “Probably powerful enough in your own sphere of influence down in the Abyss.” Blaze, fully in control of the Ghost Rider for the moment, knew this to be true, as Noble Kale had informed him of Herem’s infernal reputation. “So who could have convinced you that it was so damn necessary for you to come here, to this spot on Earth? What did they dangle in front of you in exchange for slaughtering as many other demons as you could?”

Herem snarled truculently, nostrils flaring, eyes narrowing, but said nothing.

“That shotgun never runs out of ammo, you know, Herry,” Ghost Rider informed the demon, unconcerned. “You want to start answering my questions now, while you still have most of your legs, or wait until you have to flop toward the big rumble like a fish?”

“A sorceress,” Herem spat. “Ask me not her name, I know it not.”

“You don’t know her name, but you were willing to buy whatever she was selling?” Ghost Rider asked. “I may take back that part about you being a smart demon.”

“Names are unnecessary when power speaks for itself,” Herem retorted. “Her power was as plain to one such as me as the naked heart of Hell.”

“And did she offer to share this power?” Ghost Rider pressed.

Herem laughed coldly. “Share? Speak not of sharing when you speak to true demonkind, fallen one. It is a concept unknown to us.”

“Of course,” Ghost Rider conceded. “But she must have offered something.”

“A prize,” Herem admitted. “Total invincibility. Whatever demon might prove invincible against all other demons, would be granted a boon so powerful that no force in any realm or reality would be able to resist it.”

“And why would the eradication of all demons strong enough to meet her challenge, except one, be worth granting that boon?” Ghost Rider demanded. “What’s in it for your anonymous sorceress?”

“I know not, and I care not,” Herem insisted.

“And what if this boon of total invincibility is a total lie?” Ghost Rider pointed out.

“A lie it cannot be,” Herem shook its head. “She bestowed it, for less than a worm’s heartbeat, but time enough it was to know it. To need it.”

“A free taste,” Ghost Rider said speculatively, as if weighing the plausibility of the idea. “And you don’t think that someone so interested in total demonic slaughter wouldn’t just refuse to grant the prize after all, when the dust settles and ninety-nine-point-ninety-nine percent of the combatants are dead, and the survivor is hanging by a thread?”

“If survivor I am, never will I be hanging by a thread,” Herem insisted.

“Enough of these pointless questions!” Noble Kale urged from the back of Ghost Rider’s consciousness. “This is unbecoming of a monarch of Hell!”

“Maybe the monarch of Hell can afford to charge into an apocalyptic battle without knowing why it’s being fought in the first place,” Blaze thought back at his ancestor. “But I won’t do that if I can help it.”

“Herem has already revealed to you everything he is capable of expressing,” Kale responded testily.

“Actually, on that score I agree,” Blaze confirmed. Without another word, Ghost Rider channeled a surge of otherworldly power into the length of chain wrapped around Herem’s chest, and the toroidal links contracted like flexing sinews of flaming steel. With a choked-off scream of agony, Herem’s upper body was instantaneously quartered, severed arms tumbling to the desert floor, guillotined head rolling across hardpan, ruined trunk slumping down between spasmodically quivering legs and spilling rank gore onto dry ground which thirstily absorbed the foul liquid. Ghost Rider watched the demon’s dark lifeblood disappearing into the earth and was fleetingly troubled by the noxious sight, then turned his back on the fiend’s dismembered corpse and moved on. N’Kantu slowly fell in step behind him.

Before walking long enough to even consider summoning a hellfire-cycle, Ghost Rider reached the edge of a cliff which dropped down into a vast canyon. He stood on the rocky lip and could see a bloated, blood-red sun setting in the west. Then, somewhere in the distance, a horn sounded, an ancient war fanfare calling all who could hear it to arms.
And in the canyon below, Hell was unleashed...