The night highway burned with headlights and dust.
Somewhere in the deep South, under a bruised violet sky, three jeeps thundered down the road. Their target a battered sedan, swerved violently from lane to lane, struggling to stay ahead.
Inside the car, Nadya gripped the steering wheel until her knuckles went white. Her heart hammered as bullets cracked past the windows.
"Sit tight, Danny!" she shouted, voice trembling. "Don't look back!"
In the passenger seat, Danny, barely twelve, clutched his seatbelt and buried his face against his knees. The boy's breathing came in sharp gasps.
Nadya's eyes darted to the rearview mirror, the jeeps were gaining. They're too fast. She slammed her foot on the accelerator, praying the engine wouldn't give out before she reached the next town.
But the road ahead was a dark blur, and every turn could be her last.
BOOM!
A burst of gunfire shattered the taillight. The car lurched. Nadya's hands slipped, and before she could correct it, the headlights caught the edge of a sharp bend.
"Oh no!"
The sedan tore through the guardrail and plunged off the highway, crashing down a slope in a shower of dirt and sparks. It slammed across a rocky field, bouncing wildly.
The impact rattled Nadya's bones, but somehow she kept the car upright…
She could feel the engine sputtering. The metal groaned beneath them. "Come on, come on!" she pleaded, slamming the gas.
But the terrain was too rough. The speed dropped, and the steering wheel fought against her hands.
Behind them, the jeeps followed without hesitation.
CRASH!
One of them rammed her from behind, the force spinning her car sideways. Nadya screamed as the vehicle veered out of control and slammed nose-first into a dirt wall.
Glass shattered and then the soft ticking of the dying engine.
Smoke rose from the hood. The car had stalled.
Nadya's heart sank. No… not now.
She twisted the key, nothing. Again… dead.
A line of headlights flared behind her, cutting through the smoke. The jeeps encircled the wreck like wolves around a wounded deer.
"Mom?" Danny whispered, tears streaking his dusty face. "They're coming…"
"I know," she breathed. "Stay down."
A dozen armed men stepped out, their shadows stretching long in the headlights. One yanked open Nadya's door and dragged her out by the hair.
"Get your hands off me!" she screamed, struggling, but a rifle butt slammed into her ribs. She air knocked from her lungs.
"No! Stop it!" Danny yelled, pounding on the window from inside the car, but his voice vanished beneath the laughter of the thugs.
Then a man stepped forward, his face illuminated by the orange glow of a cigarette. "Been a long time, sweetheart."
Nadya froze. That voice… she knew it too well.
"Carrigan?" Her eyes widened with disbelief and horror. "You? Why are you doing this?"
He took a drag from his cigarette, exhaled, and smirked. "Why do you think? Someone made me a very generous offer."
Her face twisted. "You're working for him."
Carrigan tilted his head, the ember of his cigarette glowing like a devil's eye. "Mephisto's paying better than love ever did, darling. And he wants you and the boy alive. Don't ask me why, I don't care."
He gestured with his gun toward the car. "Grab the kid."
Two men moved toward the passenger door.
Nadya tried to get up, but Carrigan kicked her back down.
His smile faltered, bitterness leaking through. "You really thought you could run from me? From this?" He spat. "The kid's not mine."
She stared up at him, defiant even through the pain. "He's not yours," she hissed. "He's mine."
Carrigan's smirk returned. "Not for long."
Rrrrrrrghhha
A sound rose across the desert.
A deep, mechanical roar that made the ground tremble.
One of Carrigan's men looked around nervously. "What the hell is that?"
Another cocked his gun. "An engine?"
"Don't panic!" he barked, masking the unease creeping up his spine. "Grab your guns! Now!"
He'd been warned about this… the Ghost Rider.
Mephisto had told him that he might come for the boy. Carrigan had laughed at the time. Now, hearing that sound grow louder, his smirk was gone.
Engines revved nervously as his men scrambled, chambering rounds and taking aim toward the darkness.
A streak of fire shot over their heads, searing through the air, a comet of flame that crashed down the far side of the slope.
When the smoke cleared, a motorcycle wreathed in hellfire tore across the ground, its wheels spinning molten trails into the dust.
Atop it rode a figure of death, a leather-clad skeleton with eyes burning like furnaces, a chain coiled around his arm.
The Ghost Rider had arrived.
He'd followed the trail of Mephisto's spawn here, the fiery mark of the boy's fear guiding him through the night.
When he'd sensed the child's aura stop moving and stay still, his gut twisted with dread. He'd pushed the throttle to its limit, riding straight into this nightmare.
Johnny or what was left of him, flicked the rear wheel in a perfect sideways drift, cutting a half-circle of fire into the dirt.
The infernal engine then fell silent.
For a heartbeat, the night was still.
The Ghost Rider sat motionless at the center of the burning ring, his skull gleaming white-hot in the dark. Flames licked his shoulders, reflecting in the terrified eyes of Carrigan's men.
Even Carrigan, hardened killer that he was, felt the chill of purgatory crawl up his spine as that eyeless skull turned toward him, toward his very soul.
His mouth went dry. "Wh-what the hell…"
Ghost Rider hollow gaze slid from Carrigan… to the car… to Danny, the frightened boy pinned against the door. Then to Nadya, bleeding and gasping on the ground.
The Rider's grip tightened on his chain. The flames around him surged higher, roaring like an army of the damned.
Carrigan snapped, breaking the paralysis.
"Kill him!" he bellowed, forcing bravado into his voice. "Use the guns, light him up!"
The command snapped his men into action.
"Bang! Bang! Bang!"
Automatic fire tore through the air, striking Ghost Rider square in the chest, the shoulders, the skull. Sparks and shell casings rained like metal hail.
The bullets punched through him, through burning leather, through ribs of blackened steel, and out the other side, trailing streams of molten light.
Through each wound, fire spilled instead of blood.
The men stared, horrified, as the bullet holes glowed red-hot, revealing that the creature's insides weren't flesh… but flame, an endless inferno flickering beneath the bones.
Ghost Rider tilted his head slowly…
The bullets clinked as they dropped, molten, to the ground.