"Demons can't get in?" Hawkeye repeated, his eyes narrowing as his palm quietly moved to rest on his collapsed tactical bow. "It seems, sir, that you are no ordinary person either."
S.H.I.E.L.D. agents were naturally bred for paranoia, reasonably suspicious of everyone who conveniently approached them during a crisis. Clint Barton was certainly no exception. An abandoned church that just happened to be where Johnny Blaze was saved? A groundskeeper who understood demonic lore and hallowed ground?
No matter how one looked at it, this old cowboy was highly suspicious. The timing of his appearance was simply too coincidental.
"Young man," Carter Slade said, taking a slow, calm puff of his pipe. "Don't be so impatient. I'm just a retired cowboy. There's no need to be so guarded here."
Seeing that Hawkeye had already placed his hand on his weapon, Carter did not make any aggressive moves. He simply offered a piece of quiet, tired advice.
At this tense moment, a groan broke the silence. The long-slumbering Johnny Blaze finally woke up.
Following a sharp call from Natasha, Hawkeye and Carter Slade exchanged a lingering glance. They walked out of the chapel and into the back room in tacit agreement, neither of them bringing up the previous topic again.
"Johnny, how are you?" Natasha asked, stepping to the side of the cot. "What exactly happened last night?"
"Water..." Johnny gasped, clutching his throat. "Water!"
Johnny had absolutely no heart to pay attention to Natasha's tactical questions right now. Currently, he only wanted to drink. Severe dehydration and blistering thirst were the smallest side effects of hosting the Spirit of Vengeance.
He grabbed the glass of water that had already been prepared on the nightstand and downed it in one desperate gulp. Only then did Johnny look at Natasha.
At the same time, the fragmented, fiery memories of last night began to violently churn in his mind.
'Roxanne!'
"Quick!" Johnny yelled, throwing his legs over the side of the bed. "We have to go save Roxanne! Blackheart took her!"
Carter Slade and Hawkeye walked into the room just as Johnny began to frantically recount what had happened at the warehouse and the desert highway.
"You're saying..." Hawkeye crossed his arms, processing the intel. "Last night you fought Mephisto's son. But because it turned daylight, the Spirit went dormant, and you let him get away."
Natasha and Clint remained silent, their expressions heavy.
Instead, it was Carter Slade who, after hearing Johnny's frantic account, responded with profound gravity. "I was just about to say that daylight suppresses the Rider. It's a curse of the shadows."
"Sir." Natasha turned to the old man, her sharp eyes locking onto his weathered face. "You seem to be regarding everything that happened to Johnny without any surprise at all."
Carter Slade glanced at the group. A flash of heavy hesitation crossed his mind. In the end, he decided to keep his ultimate secret, letting his true identity die with him for now.
"He isn't the first Ghost Rider I've seen," Carter said softly. "Before this, there was a Rider named Carter Slade. Like him, he could transform through Hellfire."
Saying this, Carter signaled the three of them to follow him out. Under his lead, the group walked out into the dusty cemetery, stopping before a weathered, stone tombstone.
On the marker, the faded engraving clearly read:
[Tomb of Carter Slade]
The expressions of Natasha, Hawkeye, and Johnny changed. This was the first-generation Ghost Rider they had been desperately looking for. The man was actually already dead? Then what the hell were they supposed to do?
While the group was in shock, the Caretaker continued to spin his half-truth.
"I buried him with my own hands," Carter lied smoothly, his eyes filled with genuine grief for his past life. "The story of the Ghost Rider... is what he told me before he passed."
Carter continued his narration of the ancient myth, but several of the audience members no longer had the heart to listen. Natasha and Hawkeye only knew that their primary lead had gone completely cold again. And Johnny, right now, only wanted to hurry up and track down Roxanne.
"Sir, we may need to conduct a thorough search of these grounds," Natasha interrupted politely but firmly. "You know what Blackheart came to Earth for. The Contract of San Venganza might have been hidden here by that first-generation Rider before he died."
Carter Slade finished his story, nodding slowly.
Natasha and Hawkeye, however, did not fully believe him. Before investigating the true identity of the old man in front of them, the authenticity of everything he said was highly open to question.
However, they had at least obtained confirmation that the first-generation Ghost Rider had stayed in this place. They immediately sent all the clues back to S.H.I.E.L.D. Command.
The first tactical objective was to dispatch a specialized team to search this abandoned church and cemetery from top to bottom, using ground-penetrating radar to see if the Contract was buried here. The second objective was to run a deep historical background check on everything regarding the old Caretaker's past.
S.H.I.E.L.D. moved with blistering speed. In less than half an hour, several unmarked black SUVs had already parked at the church entrance. Agents carrying professional scanning equipment swarmed the grounds, checking every crypt and floorboard.
The background information Natasha requested, however, was incredibly difficult to collect. This old gentleman was clearly from a bygone era. Information from the 1800s was preserved entirely in fragile paper form deep in federal archives. To retrieve and digitize those records would require a significant amount of time they didn't have.
"I have to go save Roxanne!" Johnny paced the chapel, his hands running through his hair. "I can't just stay here like this!"
While the S.H.I.E.L.D. search work was in full swing outside, Johnny could not bear the waiting. With Roxanne's life or death completely unknown, how could he stay trapped in a church doing absolutely nothing?
"But do you know where she is?" Natasha asked sharply, stepping in front of him. "We have no clues regarding Blackheart's location in our hands right now. We can only wait!"
"Wait?! She could be dying!"
"Don't panic, Johnny. Blackheart definitely won't do anything to Roxanne yet," Natasha explained, slipping into her interrogator mindset to calm him. "Because he actively wants to use Roxanne to control you."
Blackheart's intention in kidnapping Roxanne was a textbook hostage tactic to threaten Johnny. Therefore, as long as Blackheart's ultimate goal had not been achieved, Roxanne was highly valuable and definitely safe. Rather than looking for Blackheart's tracks like headless flies across the vast desert, it was vastly superior strategy to hold the enemy's objective in their own hands.
"The absolute first thing we need to do now is to find the Contract of San Venganza," Natasha reasoned. "As long as the Contract is in our hands, he won't need you to look for him at all. Naturally, he will come directly to our door with Roxanne to make a trade."
Hearing Natasha's cold but flawless logic, Johnny's irritable, frantic mood finally calmed down a fraction. He nodded, no longer clamoring that he must leave immediately.
Time passed slowly, the intense desert heat fading as the sky gradually darkened into a cool evening.
After half a day of exhaustive searching, absolutely no clues or magical artifacts of value had been found in the abandoned church. Frustrated, the S.H.I.E.L.D. units withdrew in an orderly fashion.
Natasha, Clint, and Johnny did not leave, however. Instead, they found a few empty pews and back rooms and stayed there, waiting for the inevitable.
A chilling breeze brushed through the dark treetops outside the cemetery, bringing a slight, unnatural rustling sound.
Lighting a candle on his wooden desk, Carter Slade, who was quietly reading an old leather-bound book, suddenly looked up toward the heavy oak door.
'Coming so fast?' Carter thought, his ancient instincts flaring.
He pushed open the wooden door, stepping out into the cool night air. There was no one visibly outside. Carter calmly picked up a heavy, iron-tipped iron shovel leaning by the doorframe and looked around the silent cemetery.
The moment he looked up, a pale, bloated figure dripping with foul-smelling water materialized from a puddle on the path. It was the Water Demon, Wallow.
"This is holy ground," Carter warned, his voice turning to gravel. He held the shovel across his chest, smoothly adopting a seasoned defensive posture. "Get lost, demon!"
And just then, a cold, aristocratic voice sounded directly behind him.
"You truly think I am one of those ordinary demons?"
Carter spun around and swung the heavy iron shovel with all his might, but the weapon was effortlessly snatched out of the air by a pale, flawless hand.
Blackheart ripped the shovel away and casually whipped the heavy iron handle directly into the side of the old man's head.
CRACK!
Carter fell to his knees, blood pouring down his face.
"I possess all of my father's immense power..." Blackheart whispered, leaning down as his eyes shifted to pitch-black. "...but none of his weaknesses."
Blackheart casually discarded the bent shovel into the dirt. He raised his boot and viciously kicked Carter Slade in the ribs.
"I am not the same as him! I will definitely succeed where he failed!" Blackheart roared, his elegant facade crumbling into demonic rage. "Give me the Contract! I know it's hidden with you!"
"I don't... know what you're talking about," Carter wheezed, spitting blood.
"Give it to me!"
CRACK!
"Give it to me!"
Blackheart kept brutally kicking the old Caretaker, the heavy impacts echoing through the silent graveyard until he had beaten the old man to the absolute brink of death.
"You cannot keep this Contract hidden forever!" Blackheart snarled, grabbing Carter by his blood-soaked collar and lifting him off the ground. "Give it to me!"
.....
.....
.....
Give me powerstones.
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