"He really knows how to make himself look good."
Evenson frowned as Melinda finished explaining what had happened. At least now he understood how Ghost Rider had arrived.
Who would have thought blowing up a motorcycle would somehow produce a flaming Nezha?
The thought still irritated him.
He turned toward Clea with a sour expression.
"Next time, let’s sell him a magic hula hoop."
Despite Evenson’s sarcasm, Ghost Rider’s sudden arrival had effectively decided the battlefield.
Carrigan was quietly having the worst night of his life.
He had no idea what he’d done to deserve this.
Every person he’d encountered tonight had been stranger than the last.
The woman who could turn rocks into grenades had been bad enough, but at least she looked human. With enough firepower, his men could still keep her pinned down.
This new arrival?
This thing had completely abandoned the boundaries of biology.
Carrigan had lived his entire career on the wrong side of gunfire. He’d seen enhanced people before. He’d encountered the occasional freak with some bizarre ability.
But nothing like this.
A horrible thought crept into his mind.
Maybe...
His eyes involuntarily drifted toward the sky.
Maybe some god of bad luck had been watching him from above all night.
Whether that was true or not didn’t matter.
There was no walking away from this situation peacefully.
Carrigan clenched his teeth and shouted,
"Kill him!"
Anyone could hear the fear underneath his command.
His men opened fire anyway.
The woman behind the car might still be willing to surrender if things went badly.
This thing?
There probably wouldn’t even be an opportunity to negotiate.
The bullets struck Ghost Rider.
And accomplished absolutely nothing.
He barely reacted.
If he hadn’t remembered why he’d come here in the first place, he probably wouldn’t have bothered acknowledging the attack at all.
Ghost Rider tilted his head slightly and glanced over his shoulder.
Even without flesh on his skull, the contempt in his expression was unmistakable.
His hand reached toward his chest.
For one ridiculous instant, Evenson expected some mythical red silk ribbon to come flying out.
Instead, Ghost Rider unleashed his hellfire chains.
One mercenary was struck.
He didn’t even have time to scream before his body disintegrated into ash.
Ghost Rider turned.
Flames erupted beneath his feet.
Then he moved.
Racing across the battlefield on his blazing wheels, he tore through the darkness with impossible speed, leaving streaks of fire behind him.
Carrigan and his men felt their blood run cold.
Nobody knew who would be next.
Maybe one of them.
Maybe all of them.
Waiting for death was always worse than death itself.
Fortunately, they didn’t have to wait long.
Ghost Rider suddenly stopped.
He had chosen his target.
"Shit!"
"Shit!"
The two curses came almost simultaneously.
Up in the aircraft, Evenson slapped a hand against his forehead.
He had absolutely no words.
Down below, Melinda was the one who had cursed.
Because Ghost Rider had stopped directly in front of her.
Of all the people on the battlefield.
Him.
Her.
Right here.
Ghost Rider reached down and grabbed Melinda by both shoulders, lifting her off the ground.
He could sense the weight of sin clinging to her.
He could also sense something else.
This woman seemed to have a very personal grudge against him.
More importantly...
He felt it.
"Hunger..."
The same sensation that had stirred within Melinda was now coming from him.
The power inside her reacted violently to Ghost Rider’s proximity.
There was no way he couldn’t feel the energy they shared.
"Hunger?"
Melinda was furious.
This guy was supposed to be her ally.
Instead, he was proving to be the worst teammate imaginable.
She had learned one thing, though.
She kept her head down.
She wasn’t about to look directly into his eyes.
Then she roared,
"You think you’re the only one who feels that?"
Green light erupted from her hunting knife.
She drove the blade upward.
It punched through Ghost Rider’s jaw and burst out through the top of his skull.
"AAARGH!"
Melinda screamed as she tore herself free.
She ripped the knife back out and attacked again.
Left.
Right.
Left.
Right.
She unleashed a brutal flurry of strikes, seven or eight blows in rapid succession.
Then she spun.
The flat of the blade slammed into Ghost Rider’s skull with enough force to send his head spinning several times around on his neck.
"Hnngh..."
Despite the savage assault, the damage was surprisingly limited.
Ghost Rider calmly grabbed his dislocated jaw and snapped it back into place.
Then, as though the whole thing were some private joke, he raised one finger and wagged it at Melinda.
No.
Bad.
He clenched his right hand.
He was about to deliver judgment upon the sinful woman standing before him.
His fist had barely begun to move when it stopped.
Ghost Rider’s head jerked from side to side.
His hands flew across his body.
He clawed desperately at his own jacket.
Something was wrong.
Something that should have been impossible after transformation.
He was itching.
Actually itching.
Ghost Rider tore open his leather jacket.
The wounds Melinda had inflicted were glowing green.
Thin strands of green energy had spread outward from the cuts like roots, burrowing deeper and deeper.
The sensation had reached his very soul.
Melinda had only undergone the first stage of Evenson’s enhancement. The fel energy embedded in her attacks was still extremely weak compared with Evenson’s own.
She wasn’t capable of overwhelming Ghost Rider’s control over his flames.
But fel energy was insidious.
And once it entered something, there were only two ways to deal with it.
It could corrupt and assimilate the host.
Or it could be completely purged.
Melinda’s attacks contained only a trace of fel energy, but Ghost Rider was almost entirely elemental in nature.
That was more than enough to make him extremely uncomfortable.
"Go, go, go!"
Carrigan’s eyes lit up.
His two biggest problems had started fighting each other.
For the first time that night, things were looking up.
He immediately shouted for his men to move.
Unfortunately, the order caught Melinda’s attention.
She instantly sprang out from behind the vehicle.
"I’m a SHIELD agent!"
She raised her voice.
"Drop your weapons!"
At almost the exact same moment, Ghost Rider finally shook off the fel energy interfering with his body.
He let out a furious roar and charged after her.
Carrigan saw both figures coming.
And misunderstood everything.
They were both after him.
That was unacceptable.
Time for the big guns.
"Get the launchers!"
His men opened the rear of one of the vehicles and pulled out two shotgun-style grenade launchers.
Carrigan raised his weapon.
"Fire!"
They launched explosive rounds at the two pursuing figures.
"Fuck!"
The instant Melinda saw the weapons, she knew what was coming.
She tore the door from the nearest vehicle and raised it as a shield.
Her enhanced strength allowed her to finish reinforcing the makeshift barrier just before the grenade struck.
The impact still launched her bodily through the air.
Ghost Rider had no such luxury.
He simply took the blast head-on.
The explosion hurled him into another vehicle.
Carrigan saw Ghost Rider struggling to climb back to his feet.
He grinned.
Why stop at one?
"Again!"
He and his men fired another round.
This time, the grenade struck the vehicle itself.
The fuel tank exploded.
Fire engulfed everything.
Carrigan didn’t wait to see what happened next.
He grabbed Danny and dragged the boy toward one of the remaining vehicles.
He didn’t even bother finishing Nadia.
He and his men piled inside and sped away into the night.
For the moment, survival mattered more than anything else.
...
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