Eddie Delgado lurked in an alley off Sundance Square. He needed cash-fast-and wasn't too picky about how he got it. He peered around the corner, looking for a likely prospect.

A grin came across his stubble-covered face as he spotted a teenage Goth chick heading down the side walk toward him, no doubt on her way home from a long night of clubbing. Oblivious to her surroundings, she swayed to the rhythm of whatever morbid ditty was playing over her iPod. A tight black T-shirt warned: I LEAVE BITE MARKS. Her frizzy hair was dyed pitch-black. Racoon makeup shadowed her eyes. Her ivory complexion looked like it hadn't seen the sun in ages. A silver ankh dangled on a chain around her neck. Studded wristbands adorned her pudgy arms. Appar ently alone, she had the brick-paved sidewalk to her self.

Eddie's bloodshot eyes zoomed in on the shining Egyptian amulet, as well as the lacy black handbag slung over her shoulder. He wondered how much money she was carrying, and what he might be able to get for her jewelry. Darting back behind the corner, he listened to her footsteps drawing nearer. His fingers tightened on the grip of a rusty Bowie knife. He waited until she came into view, then pounced on her from behind. She yelped in surprise and he clamped his hand over her mouth and dragged her roughly into the unlit alley.

Eddie slammed her up against a graffiti-covered stone wall. His hefty body pressed against her, pinning her to the wall. He held the knife to her throat, while his free hand yanked the bag from her shoulder. She squirmed helplessly, unable to get away. Some sort of exotic perfume tickled his nostrils.

"Shut up and be still!" he hissed into her ear. "Or I'll kill you!"

Her eyes bulged in terror. She trembled uncontrol lably.

The girl's obvious distress and vulnerability turned Eddie on. He sniffed her hair, inhaling another deep breath of her fragrance, as he considered the possibili ties of this situation. He had only intended to rob this chick, but . . . now that he had her alone in the alley, he found he wanted more than just the contents of her purse. She wasn't bad-looking, once you got past all the spooky Goth crap. Who knew? Maybe he'd even let her live afterward...

The roar of an approaching motorcycle broke into his lustful fantasies. He glanced back over his shoulder, just to make sure they weren't going to be interrupted, and started to haul the teenager deeper into the alley. He froze in his tracks, however, as a skull-headed biker rode past the alley on a flaming chopper.

"What the f-?"

He exchanged a startled look with his victim, who seemed similarly stunned by the bizarre apparition. Did we really just see that?

Maybe he should just grab the girl's money and run?

But it was already too late. The blazing cycle, along with its spectral rider, backed up in front of the alley. The skull-headed biker got off the chopper and stood ominously at the mouth of the filthy passageway. Lam bent flames danced around her fleshless cranium like a demonic halo. Her burning sockets stared at Eddie and his intended victim.

"Oh, crap," the hoodlum muttered. Sensing he had real trouble on his hands, he released the girl, who quickly dashed away from him. She hesitated momentarily between Eddie and the ghostly motorcyclist, uncertain who represented the greater threat, then decided to take her chances with the devil she didn't know. Her awestruck eyes got a good look at the eerie biker as she sprinted past her as quickly as she could manage on her tottering heels. Frantic footsteps receded into the distance, leaving Eddie alone with the rider. The nightmarish entity paid no heed to the girl's departure. Her fearsome gaze remained fixed on the trembling mugger.

Eddie turned and ran, desperate to be anywhere but here. Startled rats scurried beneath an overstuffed garbage dumpster to get out of his way. Broken glass crunched beneath his feet. The bottom rung of a rusty metal fire escape beckoned to him, and he jumped onto a trash can to try to reach the hanging ladder. His fingers closed around the painted steel bar and he felt a surge of hope as he started to pull himself upward onto the fire escape.

He was going to get away!

Eddie's blood suddenly turned to ice as the Ghost Rider's skeletal hand grabbed onto the back of his belt. With unbelievable strength, she pulled Eddie back down onto the floor of the alley. She spun the mugger around so that Eddie had no choice but to stare right into the skull's blazing eyes.

In a panic, Eddie stabbed his knife into the monster's shoulder. The blade sliced through Ghost Rider's leather jacket, but was quickly consumed by the hellish flames blazing underneath the leather. Eddie yelped in pain as the knife turned red-hot. Molten metal dripped onto the pavement. He hastily dropped the knife, leaving him unarmed and defenseless before the wrath of the ghastly avenger.

It was the single most terrifying moment of Eddie Delgado's pathetic life. It got worse as the Ghost Rider pronounced judgment on his wretched soul:

"Guilty."

The burning skull was only inches away from Eddie's own face. He tried to tear his eyes away, but the cavernous black sockets seemed to suck him in. At first, he saw only the plutonic flames burning where the skull's eyes should have been, but, within a heartbeat, faces began to appear within the roiling fires.

The faces of all the men, women, and children he had ever abused over the course of his short, brutal existence.

He recognized the wrinkled Russian widow he had mugged on her way home from church, the four-eyed geek he had beaten the crap out of in junior high, the asshole he'd stabbed in that bar fight, the ex-girlfriend he used to slap around, the witness he'd crippled for testifying against him, the "dates" he had forced himself upon, the yuppie tourists whose bodies would never be found, the homeless guy he set on fire, the fags whom he and his buddies had put in the hospital that one time, and so many others, more than he could even re member, names and faces that he thought he had long forgotten. The endless string of victims blurred into a gory montage of pain and suffering. Their pitiful cries and whimpers echoed inside his own skull, adding to the downward spiral of his already-slipping sanity.

"Your soul is stained by the blood of the innocent," Ghost Rider declared. "Feel their pain. ..."

The tortured faces merged into a single contorted visage that Eddie almost didn't recognize as his own. He opened his mouth to scream, but all that escaped his lungs was a thin, plaintive whistle, like the air being let out of leaky tire. His limbs refused to move. He felt paralyzed from the neck down.

"... A hundredfold."

All at once, Eddie felt every act of violence, every evil he had ever committed, revisited upon him . . . with interest. A phantom knife twisted in his gut, in visible blows rained down on him, illusory flames seared his skin. Every inch of his body cried out in torment. A lifetime's worth of fear and guilt left his con science raw and bleeding.

He dropped onto the trash-strewn floor of the alley. Shuddering from head to toe, he curled up into a fetal position. A low moan keened from his lips.

Eddie Delgado's glassy eyes stared inward into what remained of his soul, reliving his copious sins forever-more.

Ghost Rider left him lying there.

A wrought-iron fence surrounded the old cemetery, which was several miles west of the urban metroplex. Weathered tombstones and mausoleums rose from the parched soil. Tall grass and weeds clotted the over grown graveyard. Dawn was rising as Ghost Rider motored up to the open gate, drawn by a powerful compulsion she didn't fully understand. The Hellcycle's engine began to sputter as the sun's rays fell upon the infernal chopper.

Night, and night alone, was the Rider's rightful domain.

The Hellcycle chugged to a halt just inside the cemetery. Ghost Rider stumbled off the bike and tottered woozily upon her feet. An overpowering weakness washed over her in conjunction with the rising sun. She reached out for a nearby headstone, hoping to steady herself, but her strength evaporated with the dawn. She toppled forward onto the ground, hitting the earth with a clatter of bones. Unwilling to relinquish her hold on existence, she crawled across the graveyard, dragging herself towards the shade of a large marble monument. Her flaming aura began to sputter weakly.

The merciless sunlight brought on a bizarre transformation. Fresh skin spread over the naked skull. Thick red hair sprouted from her bony dome. The burning embers within her eye sockets congealed into confused emerald orbs. It was like watching a burning cadaver de compose in reverse. The eldritch flames died out.

Wendy Corduroy lifted her shaky head from the ground. Bleary-eyed, she looked about in confusion. She tried to lift her from the dirt, but exhaustion overcame her. Her trembling limbs would not support her and she collapsed onto the earth. Her eyelids drooped shut.

The sound of a shovel striking the ground, only a few inches away from her head, briefly roused her. Wendy looked up to see a tall, masculine figure loom ing over her, leaning against the handle of the shovel. Silhouetted against the rising sun, the man's feature's were obscured by the glare, but Wendy got an impression of a grizzled cowboy who looked like he had just stepped out of an old Louis L'Amour novel, minus the Stetson hat.

"Well, well, well. That was a sight I never thought I'd live to see. Heh, mornin', bonehead."

His gruff voice sounded distinctly unimpressed, and . . . . . extremely familiar.

Who?

Wendy passed out at the man's feet.