Disclaimer: This is a work of fanfiction. Ghost Rider belongs to Marvel Comics and Sony Pictures and possibly others. The Rock (1996) belongs to Don Simpson, Jerry Bruckheimer and probably a whole lot of other people/companies. Daredevil belongs to Marvel Comics and probably a lot of other people as well. I don't own them and I won't make any money from this. I'm just seeing what they can do when I mush them all together. Please, no suing.

Author's note: This is primarily a crossover between the Ghost Rider movie, comic and novelization with a character and some background from the 1996 movie The Rock. Daredevil appears only briefly and as more of a background event than as a character, so if Daredevil is who you're interested in there won't be enough of him in here to matter.

I will be borrowing heavily from the Ghost Rider Comics for villains and situations as well as the two movies.

Warning: I use British/Canadian spelling so some words (like sulphur/sulfer) may seem odd but they are spelled correctly.

Written for NaNoWriMo 2007.

Edited for spelling, grammer etc. August 3/15.

Rating: T for violence and maybe some swearing.

Summary: Six months have passed and Johnny Blaze heads back to Fort Worth just as the FBI come in to help with the sulphur death cases. Enter Special Agent Stanley Goodspeed, Chemical Weapon's Expert and a dead ringer for a certain hot headed motorcyclist. Crossover Ghost Rider/The Rock.

Between a Rock and the Hot Place

By Colleen

Started November 1st, 2007

Chapter One

Everyone fears and courts his own demon.

- Mason Cooley

Lonny Hopper ran, breaths harshly panting, a stitch in his side and no intention of stopping.

It just wasn't fair. That old gas station was practically out in the middle of nowhere. At worst he was looking at a poor haul from robbing the place, not...

The sound of a motorcycle engine gunned behind him and he zigzagged around a couple of rocks before tripping over a third to slide through the cactus infested sand and into a dry creek bed. By some miracle he managed to land on his feet. Ignoring his now prickling backside he staggered off along the hard cracked ground.

Damn it, it was supposed to be a simple job. Just go in, wave a gun around and make off with enough cash for his next fix. Instead the dumb assed idiot behind the cash register started waving around his own gun and then... well really it was just self defence; it wasn't his fault.

The motorbike roared again, the rider obviously driving parallel to Lonny's run along the old creek bed. He grit his teeth and tried to move faster.

It still would have been fine, but no, no that damn motorcyclist just had to come in right then and there to try and pay for his gas. Lonny knew it was a bad idea to rob the place while someone was gassing up outside, but it was just supposed to take a couple of minutes. The weekend warrior should have been busy for at least that long, if not longer.

It was such a simple plan; he didn't know how it had all gone to hell.

Literally.

"Enough!" A harsh voice growled out, the sound of it bringing to mind some powerful predator mixed with the crackle of fire and the sound of claws through flesh. A length of burning chain wrapped around Lonny's neck, choking him even as he attempted to pull the impossible length of joined metal away from his throat. Gasping exclamations of pain followed as the flames, instead of burning, were cold enough to cause instant frost bite.

With a quick yank the killer was pulled up the bank of the dry creek and into the painful grip of something even colder.

It was such a simple plan, even after he'd shot the old man who ran the even older gas station. It should still have been a simple plan, despite the guy in metal studded black leather walking in before he was supposed to. Instead, as Lonny levelled his gun at the unfortunate witness, the biker gave an angry growl before he started to laugh.

Lonny thought the guy was flaked out on something himself. After all, he had a gun in his face, a body on the floor and he was laughing. Then it must have finally dawned on him that he was next because he began to shake. A malicious little smile was starting to form on Lonny's face when the guy just, and this was the one thing he still couldn't quite believe. The guy just burst into flames.

And he was still laughing.

Lonny stared into the empty eye sockets of the burning...skeleton that held him in its grasp and felt like laughing himself. There was no way this was real. No way the guy had burned away all his flesh and could still stand. No way that some everyday slob on a bike could suddenly turn into a demon from hell. There was no such thing. The only demon's were the ones in his head and if he could just get to his next fix then even those ones couldn't get to him.

Unless of course none of this was real. Yeah that made sense. It was just a bad trip.

The apparition growled again and pulled him closer. Lonny realized then that what ever bad trip he was on, it was about to get much, much worse.

Damn, he wished he still had the gun. Not that he knew what good it would do, seeing as he'd already emptied the thing into the being in front of him and it hadn't even grunted at the impact of hot lead hitting its body.

Maybe throwing the old pistol at him hadn't been the smartest thing he'd ever done, but what good was an empty gun anyway?

As the monster in front of him pulled him in closer, Lonny felt his bladder give way. The smell of piss managed to briefly cut into the stench of brimstone that poured off of the being in front of him. One of the springs in the killers so called mind snapped then as it reached overload and he started to babble. "Just a bad trip, just a bad trip, just a bad trip, just a ba...

The burning...thing gave him a shake, shutting him up as well as making sure it captured his full attention and then it passed judgement.

"Guilty."

"No, man no, it's just a bad trip," Lonny struggled as the ghastly rider pulled him in a little bit closer and learned what a bad trip really was. The things eye sockets seemed to pull at him, dragging him into their darkness. And then he was falling. He landed hard and looked up to see the first person he'd beaten badly enough to send to the hospital and he hit him and hit him, and he felt each and every blow. Then he fell again and was holding down, and being held down as he got lucky, was raped, violated, and sickness welled up in his stomach. He fell again and again and again, each time visiting something horrible he had done, and each time it was worse.

Because each time he fell the pain became more intense. Lonny screamed and struggeled but nothing helped, nothing stopped it. And worse, even through the wall of sound and pain, he could still hear that horrible growling voice.

"Your soul is stained by the blood of the innocent. Feel their pain..."

And then he was endlessly falling, events happening faster and faster as he was forever being beaten, raped, stabbed, shot, bludgeoned. Anything and everything he had ever done was being done to him, but it had to end eventually, didn't it?

"...A hundred fold."

Lonny screamed again and knew he would never stop screaming.

Johnny Blaze dropped the quivering, keening pile of refuse know as Lonny Hopper into a pile on the floor of the gas station's small grocery store and went to check on the owner, even though he was sure the man was dead. The bullet hole dead centre in his chest made it unlikely he'd survived the shot. Johnny knelt down beside him anyway and made a quick check at the man's throat while placing a hand on his stomach below the wound to verify that the poor soul had neither breath nor pulse. With a shake of his head he pulled back from the body and sighed at the loss. Not for the first time he was disturbed by the fact that all those First Aid courses he took over the years were now mostly used to verify that someone was dead and gone, rather that being used to patch someone up while they waited for more experienced help to save them.

With another little shake of his head Johnny stood and looked around for the video camera most stores had to deter robberies. He gave a little humph when he realized the shop didn't appear to have one. Probably the reason why the wailing pile of trash lying on the floor decided to rob it.

Well, it was one less thing to worry about. He never felt good when he took one of those tapes, but he knew he'd feel even worse if he'd ended up at a police station. Being questioned about what someone might see on one of those recordings when his alter ego stepped in to punish the guilty would be... difficult.

Johnny turned towards the door to leave. He took one step then suddenly gave his forehead a whack with the palm of his right hand. As he turned back towards the checkout counter he fished his wallet out of his back pockek. Making sure to only touch the edges of the bills, something he always did, he quickly counted out the money to pay for the gas he filled his bike with.

True, there wasn't anyone here to take the money. The only person who probably cared about being paid lying dead on the floor. However, it was possible there were business partners. That, or the man might have family or heirs and what little he owned would belong to them, even the gas in Johnny's tank if he didn't pay for it.

He left the full amount, plus a small tip as he wasn't going to go around the counter and attempt to make change. He weighed the money down with a jar of liquorice that sat on the counter to tempt the impulse buyer, making sure to avoid getting his fingerprints on it. Just like the video tapes the last thing he needed was to leave any physical evidence that might end with him in lock up.

Because that had gone so well last time.

Keeping that in mind, he pulled out an old cloth he kept in his coat pocket and wiped down the inside and outside door handles on his way out. Using the same cloth he pulled the receiver off the payphone attached to the outside of the building and punched in the numbers 911. He waited until one of the operators came on the line and then let go of the handset, allowing it bang against the building. He could hear her voice, tinny over the distance as he gave the gas pump nozzle and controls a quick once over with his cloth before getting on his bike.

He definitely needed to cut back on all the CSI reruns he kept watching. They were making him even more paranoid then usual.

Grace purred to life as he kick started the engine and he pointed her front tire towards their next destination.

"Time to head home." He told her, not sure he was really ready to head back to Fort Worth and the loft he still kept there. He was however certain that after six months on the road his sanity demanded he make a pit stop and attempt to weave a few strands of his old life back into his current one. Even then, he wouldn't be staying more than a few weeks at the most. Because despite what he'd just said to Grace, he knew he could never really go home.

Strange how different being on the road felt when you knew that.

"Ah, enough introspection," and Johnny opened up the throttle, making sure to not leave any tread marks as he pulled away from the station and hit the open road, heading for home.