What Has Come Before: Noble Kale, the spirit of the Ghost Rider, came to London over a year ago, drawn by impulses that he could not explain. Before long, his purpose was made clear: his arch-enemy, the demon Blackheart, had plans to bring about a new age of magic. Bonding with his descendant Jennifer Kale, the Ghost Rider managed to destroy his enemy, but not before England fell beneath the Black Mass Barrier. The union between Noble and Jennifer flourished until the woman named Satana convinced Jennifer to take the mantle of being Gaea's servant. The life-based magic of Gaea clashed with the death magic of Noble and their union was torn asunder. Thanks to the sorcery of the new Doctor Strange, Noble Kale has been resurrected on Earth once more but he now lacks a human host... and is dying a final death as a result. 

Blackout stood up, enjoying the feel of blood dripping off his chin. She tasted good... really good. It was enough to almost make him forget about the sirens.

Pulling himself reluctantly away, the vampiric killer moved towards the open window of the girl's flat. Blackout had been following her for nearly three days before he made his move. She had been a scrumptious little thing, with raven black hair and a wiggle in her walk. He'd tried to hold his desires off as long as possible, but he'd finally given in to the urges he felt. He'd raped her and killed her... and would have raped her again if the police hadn't begun to arrive, attracted by her screams.

He stood crouched in the window, watching as the police began swarming out of their cars down below. Several of them looked decidedly non-human, with pale yellow-green skin and bulging eyes. Some type of goblin, he realized. God, this whole world has gone crazy since the barrier went up. Now we've got freakin' goblins in the police department. Save me.

Blackout threw himself across the open space between his window and the next rooftop. He landed smoothly, keeping himself low. Once upon a time, he'd been mostly human with just a few unique abilities -- cybernetic teeth for tearing and rending; the ability to 'black out' an area -- but since his rebirth as a Lilin a few years back, he was more than any normal man could hope to be. He was beautiful and strong and nothing could stop him.

Nothing except Ghost Rider, a voice whispered in his head. He frowned at the thought, trying to push it away. He didn't even know why it had risen up. Ghost Rider had been missing for months now and Blackout had no reasons to want him back. Because he always kicks your ass, the voice teased again. "Shut up," he hissed.

"I haven't said anything."

The man's voice, so eerily familiar, actually sent a chill down Blackout's spine. He stood up straight, resisting the urge to whirl around and confront the voice. "You're dead."

"I was. Wasn't the first time, though. You killed me once, remember? Ripped my throat out."

Blackout swallowed hard, his eyes narrowing. "Is this some trick? You think I'm going to be scared like some little punk? I'm not afraid of you, not even if you have come back from the dead."

"You should be." The young man stepped around the vampire, moving into his field of vision. Handsome, with short brown hair and eyes that seemed perpetually worried... It's him, all right, Blackout thought. The man wore tight jeans and a leather jacket, both of which looked slightly out of place on him. The spiked gloves and the chain he wore around his chest didn't help, either. He was too much of a pretty boy to carry off the tough-guy look. "Hi, Blackout. How have you been? Killed any innocent girls lately?"

Blackout growled and swiped out at the man before him. His sharp nails just missed the pretty boy's face. "I'm going to mess you up, kid. The way I've always wanted to."

Blackout's opponent smiled at that, which proved a bit worrisome to the vampire. The kid had never looked happy about being in a fight. Never. "You should have gone into the void with Lilith. Would have been a lot less painful for you." Punctuating his words with a sharp kick into the vampire's groin, the young man began to attack in earnest. He punched and slapped Blackout like a man possessed, driving his opponent backwards.

Blackout could scarcely believe it. The kid had always been Ghost Rider's weak point in the past. But now... Now he was almost savage. Driven to his knees, Blackout raised up a hand to ward off another blow. "Stop," he said, spitting out a large wad of blood and gore.

Dan Ketch stared down at the man below him. Blackout had killed his sister, Barbara. He had tormented Dan and his entire family. All because Dan had stood up to him. Humiliated him. Scarred him. 

Dan reached out and wrapped his gloved fingers in Blackout's hair. He tilted the vampire's head backwards and raised a spiked fist into the air. "Go to hell."

Blackout sat up quickly, shivering in the night air. He looked about wildly, taking in his surroundings and anticipating an attack. 

The woods were quiet, with not even the sound of insects to break the silence. Blackout forced his heart rate to slow, but the feeling of danger would not pass. 

The dream. Again.

What did it mean?

Jennifer Kale slid out from the between the sheets, careful not to wake her lovers. Both Satana and Amber Greene slept on, snuggling closer to one another. Their relationship -- if that's what you wanted to call it -- was an odd one, Jennifer had to admit. She and Satana had begun sleeping together even before the whole Gaea thing, but Amber was a new addition to the mix. A former agent of the Weird Happenings Organization, Amber had developed a mad crush on Jennifer during months of surveillance. She'd even gone so far as to help John Blaze escape their custody. 

All for me, Jennifer mused. Sometimes that just seems so weird... I'm not sure I like it, to be honest. The young mage pulled on a robe and stepped out of the room, moving through the darkened flat with easy familiarity. John had left about a month ago, eager to find some way to get through the Barrier, but she still expected to find him crashed out drunk on the couch every time she came through. I miss him, she realized. He was a link to the outside. To the rest of my life. To my brother Andy. Now I'm stuck here with two psycho lesbians... and Topaz. Can't forget her. Living dead girl.

"Where is he?"

Jennifer paused in the doorway to the living room. There was a figure there, sitting in a chair and facing her. The odor of rotting flesh and wet earth reached her nostrils and she resisted the urge to gag. "Who the hell are you?" she asked, preparing an illumination spell. 

"Don't. Don't look at me. Not yet."

Jennifer paused as the voice, so scratchy and tired sounding, finally began to sink in. With a tremor in her own words, she asked "Dan?"

"Where's Noble?"

Jennifer took one step forward and felt her toes splash down in something warm and wet. She pulled her foot back quickly and looked down. Through the soft light of the moon, she saw something dark... blood. "Gaea help me," she whispered.

Dan rose from his chair and Jennifer noted how oddly he stood. Like a marionette with broken strings....

"I've been looking for him, Jen. We need each other."

"Noble... He said you were dead."

Dan moved quickly towards her, his face coming into a beam of moonlight. His cheeks were sunken and yellowed and his eyes... they were sunken so deeply that he looked skeletal, like...

Like Ghost Rider.

"Jen?"

Jennifer jumped at the sudden sound, looking over to see a naked Satana watching her with concern. She looked all about her, but saw no sign of Dan... or of the blood. "He was here. I know it."

Satana moved closer. "Who was? I heard you talking to someone but I don't see--"

Jennifer waved her away and moved into the living room. She knelt down and ran her fingers over the carpet. There were indentions there, left behind by a man she'd thought lost forever. "This is incredibly fucked up."

John Blaze felt it in the depths of his soul. He lit a cigarette and held his hand around it, protecting it from the wind. He was here at this out of the way English pub for a reason -- to drink himself and the demon who lurked within into oblivion. But it hadn't worked out that way. He couldn't bear to become drunk again...

Because when he got drunk he saw him.

Daniel Ketch. His brother.

John's mind wandered over the broken and twisted family tree that he called his own. John had two siblings -- Dan and Barbara -- but both of them had been taken and hidden while John himself was a youngster. Their mother, Naomi, feared that the family curse would come to haunt them all and had sought to save the eldest -- John -- by brokering a deal with Mephisto. Stupidity runs in the family, John thought. 

The "deal" had come with a twist. As Naomi lay dying, Mephisto had promised her that even if John did not become "the" Ghost Rider, he could still become "a" Ghost Rider. This had led, eventually, to John's bonding with Zarathos.

Dan, for his part, had become the unlucky recipient of the family curse. Normally it affected only the first-born child in each generation, but with John immune to it, that left Barbara... who was horribly killed by Blackout. That left Dan to become Ghost Rider. He'd handled it as well as possible, but in the end it had left him dead and buried.

Or had it?

Dan tossed the unfinished cigarette to the ground and smashed it beneath a boot. A few angry looking trolls were hanging out nearby and they gave him a nasty glare. Their noses were especially sensitive to pollution and nothing cheesed them off like smoking. 

"Scary stuff, huh? I mean, trolls. Really."

John didn't look at the man who spoke beside him. He didn't need to. He wasn't really there, anyway. "You're here at the wrong time, pal. I'm not even halfway drunk."

"I'm no hallucination, John. You know that."

"Go away."

"You really want that? Or you want me to tell you how Roxanne and the kids are doing?"

John's jaw clenched hard. He didn't like thinking about the wife and kids he'd left behind. The ones he'd never see again because of this barrier. "You're not real."

"She misses you, John. She used to cry herself to sleep every night, wondering if you were alive. And the kids--"

"Shut up!" John swung a fist at the man beside him and he felt it connect -- hard. Something wet sloughed off onto his hand and he turned to see Dan rotting there, clutching at a chunk of his face that now hung loosely. "Jesus."

"No. He doesn't care much for me these days. Neither does Mephisto. It's not like either universe can have Noble's soul anyway... did you know it extends to all of his line, too? We're all just floating in the void. Anybody who tells you anything different is lying."

John stared at the undead thing before him, his mouth suddenly dry. "Why are you doing this? Why are you haunting me?"

Dan stared at him with sunken eyes. "Noble's been revived again. A magician did it. But you know that he can't stay on this plane without a mortal host...."

"And Jennifer's out because of her relationship to Gaea," John murmured. "And I can't be a host because of my deal with Zarathos." His eyes narrowed suddenly. "My kids...."

"No. They're safe. So's Jennifer's brother. For some reason, Noble can't get out past the Barrier either. That's why I'm here."

"Are you... really alive?"

Dan smiled ruefully. His skin took on a more natural cast, though it stilled 'off' somehow. "No. I'm dead. My spirit was recalled back to this world. This body... It was waiting for me. Magic. I wish they'd made it look a little healthier, though. I'm scared of what Stacy would say if she saw me like this."

"She's in London, you know."

Dan nodded. "I need to find Noble. Somehow he's reached out to me and brought me back."

"He can do that?"

"He was the Angel of Death, John. He doesn't tap into half his natural abilities."

John ignored the stares of the trolls, all of whom saw him standing and talking to thin air. "I heard reports that he'd been seen in Germany... Alongside some guy in a bad Doc Strange outfit and a hot blonde*."

(* See Pendragons # 32)

"He's not there now. I've already checked."

John heard something faint in the distance, a familiar roaring sound that both frightened him and left him excited. "You hear that?"

"A motorcycle. Noble's." Dan vanished without another word, leaving John Blaze to stare after his long-lost brother... and shed a tear.

Ghost Rider's bike lay crumpled on the side of the road, the Spirit of Vengeance not far from its side. The flames which licked about Noble Kale's skull were dim and nearly snuffed out, but there was still power in his limbs and they propelled him forward, towards a small stream that burbled nearby.

He felt pain in all his bones, pain that penetrated deeper as well. It burned and gnawed and cut at his soul, reminding him of the sorrow he had felt when his beloved Magdalena had burned... 

Noble's mind went over the past, remembering his forbidden love for a black woman that had resulted in the birth of a child. Pastor Kale, Noble's father, had been incensed by his son's supposed sins... and had branded Magdalena a witch. As she burned at the stake, she had called forth the Furies for vengeance and they had lain siege to Pastor Kale and the entire town. Noble's father had sold his own son's soul to Mephisto for salvation and Noble was transformation into the living Spirit of Vengeance... and the family curse would be born soon after.

"So much heartache because of me," Noble whispered, his voice sounding alien and strange. Without a human host, he was slowly breaking down and returning to the Void. It was by sheer force of will -- plus the knowledge of magicks gifted to him by Jennifer Kale -- that held him here and now. "Naomi. Dan. Jennifer. So many suffered...."

"And what about all the ones you saved? All the ones you avenged?"

Noble fell over onto his back, staring up at Dan's face. "Daniel?"

"Don't act all surprised. Your spirit called out to mine... You wanted me here."

"I'm sorry... I can try to send you back...."

Dan knelt down beside him and took Noble's hand in his own. "Shut up. You've got to save your strength."

"The curse..."

"Still exists, yeah. So even if you go back to the Void and waste away for a few years, eventually the barrier's coming down and you're back to where you started. That's why you need me. I'm the perfect out for the curse." Noble turned to face the young man before him. Somehow Noble's skull-faced features managed to convey his confusion and Dan smiled in return. "Bond with me. We're still linked and the magic of the Barrier will help make it possible. I'm dead. That means that you can stay in me forever... or until we get so sick of one another we want to break it off."

Noble looked away. "Why...? After all the heartache you suffered during our time together. You have finally found peace. You..." A groan of pain escaped him, giving full sign to his agony. His leather-clad form shimmered and grew paler, as if he were only partially there. 

Dan squeezed his hand. "I'm ready for this. Despite it all, you were the best thing that happened to me. You gave me strength. You gave me a purpose. Let me give those same things back to you."

A flame suddenly sparked, traveling from Noble's form to that of Dan Ketch. The two men ignited together, fusing their spirits into one. 

The mystic motorcycle revved back to life, rising slowly into an upright position. It rolled forward and stopped at the feet of its master, who stood regarding it for a long moment. There was no sign save for the crackling of fire, which danced about the Ghost Rider's skull.

"Let's ride," he whispered. 

Neil Gow staggered from the pub, one arm slung around the shoulders of his new best pal... a stocky female hobgoblin named Lonni. Both drunkards swayed unsteadily and Neil felt vomit begin to rise in his throat. "Gah. I feel bloody awful. What was in that last drink you gave me?"

"Formaldehyde. Good, eh?"

Neil blanched but said nothing. He had suddenly lost all concern about his aching belly...

There, storming down the street past him, was a visage from his past. Many, many months ago, he'd been among the first to witness the sight before him... His tales of a skull-headed rider with a flaming motorcycle had been dismissed by his friends at first, but later reports had surfaced of the so-called Ghost Rider, an ally of the Pendragons. Neil had been pleased at his friends' apologies, but the horror of the moment had haunted him for many nights.

And there he was again. The Ghost Rider rode past, the demon's leather jacket bearing a large Union Jack symbol across the back. He whirled about a corner and was gone.

"This town just gets stranger and stranger," Neil muttered.

The hobgoblin shrugged. "I've seen weirder."

AUTHOR'S COMMENTS

The Jennifer Kale as Ghost Rider experiment is officially over. It had its good moments and won't be forgotten, but I've told my tales about that and want to move on. I will say that having Noble bond with the undead spirit of Dan Ketch will mean a few changes for the Ghost Rider... He won't be the same old version that used to tool around Cypress Hills. Look for some new adventures in the days to come, though I haven't decided just yet whether or not it'll be here or in a revived Ghost Rider UK series. Let me know what you think.

Thanks for reading, everyone. 

Barry