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Moonlight washed over the desolate canyon floor.
The sound came first—a manic, cackling laugh echoing off stone walls. Then the roar of an engine tearing through the night sky, followed by the bone-rattling crash of metal meeting earth.
WHAM!
A motorcycle erupted from the darkness like something clawed up from the pit—frame wreathed in Hellfire, its exhaust pipes spitting embers.
The Ghost Rider had finally caught up.
After being jerked around by Hawk across two states and God knows how many wasted hours, the skeletal avenger had made it back to Texas just before midnight struck.
He sat astride the flaming bike, gloved hands gripping the handlebars, his skull blazing with infernal light. Empty eye sockets stared up at the cliff's edge where Hawk sat watching.
Within those voids—twin spirals of Hellfire churned and twisted—gateways straight down to the abyss.
"Kekekekeke..."
The Rider's laughter grated like rusted chains dragging over stone. He dismounted, reached behind his back, and without a word of warning, ripped the soul chain free and hurled it skyward.
The chain came alive mid-flight—a serpent made of iron and damnation. It whipped through the air, spinning into a vortex of flame that screamed toward Hawk with malicious intent.
Hawk didn't move.
He watched the burning chain spiral closer.
But the instant before impact, he flickered out of existence.
The chain slammed into empty rock. The ledge where he'd been sitting exploded into dust and rubble.
And in the same heartbeat—
CRACK.
The Ghost Rider's ribcage caved inward. His entire skeletal frame launched backward like a cannonball, smashing through the canyon wall and disappearing into a cloud of shattered stone.
"Sonic Fist."
Hawk stood exactly where the Rider had been a second before, fist still extended.
He glanced at the crater he'd just made, then pulled back his arm and drove it forward again.
"Supersonic—FIST!"
BOOOOM!
The canyon wall detonated. Rock fragments sprayed outward like shrapnel. With every punch, the Rider was driven deeper into the mountain, his skeletal body hammered further into the stone with surgical precision.
One hundred punches per second. Two hundred.
At last, with a mournful groan, the ancient cliff gave way. It collapsed in a thunderous roar, and a massive cloud of dust erupted, engulfing the Ghost Rider completely.
Hawk lowered his fist. But he didn't leave.
'Yeah, right. Like that's enough.'
The Ghost Rider wasn't like the Elemental Demons or even Blackheart. He was a Spirit of Vengeance. A weapon forged in the deepest fires.
Which meant one thing: physical attacks were basically useless.
Sure enough...
BOOOOOOM.
The rubble erupted. A skeletal figure wreathed in Hellfire burst free, leaping clear of the wreckage and landing atop the fallen stones. His boots scorched the rock beneath him, melting it into slag.
The Ghost Rider stood tall, his hollow, burning gaze locked on Hawk. He raised the soul chain in one hand.
His voice came out hollow. Otherworldly rasp.
"You. Are. Guilty."
"Who gives a damn?"
The words left Hawk's mouth at the same instant his fist shot out.
WHAM.
The Ghost Rider's skull snapped sideways. He launched backward again, slamming into another section of canyon wall.
But this time, he didn't sink in.
The Rider dropped from the cliff like a broken puppet, hit the sand, and immediately hurled his chain again.
It shot forward, coiling through the air toward Hawk's ankle—and wrapped around nothing.
The afterimage dissolved.
The Hellfire in the Rider's empty sockets flickered for a fraction of a second.
"Hey." A voice came from directly above him.
The Rider instinctively looked up, and in that same instant...
CRACK.
Hawk's fist came down like a meteor, crashing into the Rider's flaming skull with enough force to shake the ground. The impact drove the Ghost Rider not onto the surface, but into it—his entire body sinking into the earth like a nail hammered into wood.
WHAM.
WHAM.
WHAM.
By the time Hawk stepped back, only the Ghost Rider's burning skull remained above ground. Everything else—shoulders, torso, legs—buried beneath sand and stone.
Hawk shook out his right hand, flicking off the clinging Hellfire that tried to bite into his skin. He looked down at the disembodied head and let out a low whistle.
"That's one hard skull you've got."
Before he'd finished speaking—
The soul chain, still lying limp on the ground, suddenly jerked to life. It reared up like a cobra, flames roaring along its length, and struck at Hawk's legs.
Hawk didn't dodge.
He reached down with his left hand and caught it mid-strike, fingers closing around the chain's "throat."
The Rider, with only his head still visible, let out another chilling cackle.
"Kekekeke..."
The next second, the Hellfire on the chain erupted, and Hawk felt the ground beneath his feet give way. He looked down and saw that the skull was gone.
Only the body remained, still buried.
He turned his attention back to the chain in his hand—And found himself staring into a pair of burning eye sockets.
The Ghost Rider's skull had replaced the chain. It grinned at him with fleshless teeth.
"Kekekeke..."
"YOU ARE GUILTY. FACE YOUR JUDGMENT."
The flames in the Rider's eyes blazed brighter, brighter, forming twin spirals—gateways to Hell itself.
Hawk felt the pull immediately. An invisible force tugging at his soul, trying to drag it through the portal and into the abyss beyond.
If his Underworld hadn't been born yet, he'd have no defense. The pull would be irresistible. After all, he was still technically human. Earthborn. And by default, that meant his soul belonged to Mephisto's Hell.
But things were different now.
'I built my own afterlife. If my soul's going anywhere, it's going home.'
Hawk could feel the Rider's power clawing at him, trying to rip his spirit free. But his soul didn't budge.
Ten seconds passed.
Thirty.
A full minute.
Three minutes.
The Ghost Rider's laughter died. The hellfire burning in his eye sockets flickered. Then dimmed. The flames froze mid-dance. The Rider went completely still, as if reality itself had pressed pause on his existence.
Hawk's lips curved into a smile. He tightened his grip on the skull.
"What's wrong? Lost your sense of humor?"
CRACK.
A sharp, clear crack echoed through the now-silent canyon. Spiderweb fractures spread across the Ghost Rider's skull. Before the Rider separated his head from his body, Hawk had been limited in his options. But the moment he made that choice—
Game over.
"AAAAAAAAHHH!"
A scream tore from the depths of the Rider's soul. In that instant, the flaming skull in Hawk's grip flickered. For a split second, the skeletal face vanished, replaced by the haggard, terrified features of Johnny Blaze. Then it snapped back to bone.
Then flesh again.
Hawk's eyes narrowed.
'Interesting.'
He'd assumed Johnny Blaze and the Ghost Rider were like Bruce Banner and the Hulk—two separate entities sharing one body, one able to suppress the other.
But that wasn't it at all.
Johnny Blaze had merged with the Spirit of Vengeance completely. His soul and the Rider's were one and the same.
And there was only one way that could happen.
Johnny had accepted it willingly.
That explained why Sharon had said Johnny was still heading for New York even during the day, when the Rider couldn't manifest.
It wasn't just the Ghost Rider hunting Hawk.
It was Johnny Blaze, too.
Both of them wanted to drag his soul to Hell.
'No wonder the Rider was so comfortable splitting his head off. They're completely synchronized.'
"Tsk."
Hawk clicked his tongue. He looked at the head in his hand, which was still flickering between Johnny's agonized face and the Rider's skull as he tightened his grip.
The next second, his eyes went cold. He closed his hand.
The screaming stopped.
Hawk opened his hand. Bone fragments—fine as sand—slipped through his fingers and fell to the ground.
He felt it immediately. A portal to Hell opening beneath the earth, pulling what remained of Johnny Blaze's merged soul into the abyss.
Hawk stood motionless, following the sensation as it faded. He knew how to reach Hell now—but not yet.
'Let the bullet fly a little longer.'
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