He Who Fights Monsters - Chapter Two
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CHAPTER TWO
She pushes up onto her tiptoes, twines her arms around Sam’s neck, digging her fingers into broad, bulked-out shoulders for purchase, gripping hard enough to leave bruises, and tilts up her face to his. She presses her lips against his, drawing one hand up to tangle at his nape as he places strong hands around her waist, cupping her ass, and lifts her. She wraps her legs around his narrow hips, not breaking their kiss.
Sam jerks at the sensation and his motion is arrested by her kiss. She tugs back, strokes his cheek with a forefinger.
“If you only knew how hard your wings could flap, Butterfly,” she breathes huskily.
“Ruby, I told-”
“Shhh.” She cuts him off. “I know. I know. You’ve done real good. Dean would be so proud. I wish he could be here to see you…” She sees the raw grief surge unbidden into his hazel eyes. Good. This will serve “You just need a little liquid courage.” She bites down hard on her lower lip, tearing the skin. Blood wells up and Sam attacks her lips with a hard kiss, suckling at the coppery warmth.
The buzzer sounds and she pushes off of Sam's hard chest, meeting his eyes. There's fear there, but something else too - a healthy gleam of bloodlust. He might just have a chance.
The second buzzer sounds and Sam’s at the entrance to the catwalk. He’s stripped to the waist, clad only in gray board shorts, the sort worn by surfers, and fingerless black gloves strapped to his hands for traction.
At the third buzz, the partition rattles open and she can hear the roar of the crowd as Sam steps into the blindingly white strobing light. A hustler clad in a tight black t-shirt touches her elbow. “You ought to go back to your seat,” he says. “Your man’ll make it. Probably.” Black floods his eyes, obscuring the whites, irises, pupils, for the briefest of seconds and his mouth twists into a predatorily smile of anticipation.
Ruby matches his expression. “Yes,” she agrees. Her tongue snakes out, laps at the bitten flesh there as she allows him to lead her to her seat near the front row. She feels the thrum of energy of being surrounded by her own kind in her lifeless veins. “He will.”
The clang of the cage slamming shut sends a thrill of adrenaline down her spine. Dimly, as though from far away, she hears the announcer screaming over the cheering, jeering crowd. A chant begins. Hunter. The stage name is a taunt on most of their lips. Despite everything, Hell's grapevine knows about Sam Winchester, although most of it is just hearsay. In the end, he's still just a human. If only they knew, she thinks, feeling herself smile. Sam turns his head slightly to the side, catches a glimpse of her and she burrows deeper in his old brown hoodie, burying her narrow curves under fleece and stiff fabric. She grins at him, allowing her eyes to flip beetle-black for an instant as she leans forward, lips parting in anticipation.
Pain. Destruction. Chaos. Those were the things she lived, existed, for. And Lucifer knew these cage fights were right up her alley. Shame she hadn’t discovered these decades ago or been around for the Roman gladiatorial rings.
And the fact that Sam Winchester was so easy to play… well, that was merely a bonus.
::: ::: :::
The cage stinks of sweat and old blood. Sam is getting used to the scent, starting to crave it. Naturally, he identifies it with pain - the kind of pain overwhelming enough to shut off his brain for just a few minutes. A few minutes where he doesn't hate himself for all his failures, for what happened to Dean because he was too weak.
He hadn't been able to save Dean. The hounds had torn him to shreds and Sam hadn't been able to do a damn thing but watch as his brother screamed until he died. He'd been powerless to stop it; too impotent to do a goddamn thing.
He couldn't be weak again. Not if he was going to save Dean
The door on the far side of the cage retracts as his opponent enters. He's tall - nearly as tall as Sam himself, with a shaved head and a tattoo-covered chest. He sees Sam, winks at him and spits on the mat where he passes by.
Sam doesn't respond, looking past the man's skin and muscle to what's underneath. The strength of his opponent's body is irrelevant. It had taken Sam six weeks, two levels, eight broken ribs, a broken nose, a concussion, and bruises bigger than his fist to learn that lesson, but he gets it now.
The body across from him is strong, a good match physically but only the oily black cloud inside of it matters. Cautiously, Sam runs his mind over the demon's energy, careful not to tip it off early. If he plays things close to his chest, this match could be over before it starts.
The buzzer sounds, and the man darts forward, lifting his arms up in a defensive position before quickly bringing his knee toward Sam's ribs. Sam sidesteps him, rolls across the mat, comes up on one knee; one hand on the floor and the other held straight out.
The man freezes where he stands, as the demon inside of him seizes and panics. His eyes flood black and he fights back, pushing at Sam with his mind.
Sam shrugs off the strike of power easily, and a flush of satisfaction runs through him, warming his bones. He's strong, thanks to the extra doses he took from Ruby this morning and then again just before the fight. He can still taste the faint hint of sulfur on his tongue; feel her blood inside his own, taking his power and amplifying it tenfold.
He calls on that power now, wrapping it around the demon as he shoves back, knocking his opponent down, immobilizing him against the mat. Sam takes his time walking across the mat as the audience starts to scream, bloodthirsty and hungry for action. He drops down, pinning the demon under one knee, lays his hand on the man's chest and pulls.
The demon begins to cough and choke, but it digs its heels in, holding onto its stolen body with all the energy it can muster.
It's not enough. It's strong, but Sam is stronger. He's finally stronger.
::: ::: :::
Sam wrestles the demon down, straddles him. He glares, raises one hand and Ruby can tell the moment it happens; that shift and stutter when he searches, finds, and gets it.
Black smoke begins to plume, spread, like a low-lying costal fog, then it gathers, churning into a pillar, and shoots upwards into the ceiling.
Once, that might’ve elicited a gasp from the crowd, a mad scramble for the exits, but not anymore. Ruby glances at either side of her, cranes her neck. Most of them are Level Ones, maybe Twos - bottom feeders, grunts, and cannon fodder. The one in the ring is a Level Three; the third and final Sam will have to battle if he wins this round. Once, she would’ve thought that the audience would be more terrified the stronger, more controlled Sam became, a titan among humans. Instead, the reverse proved true - the higher Sam climbed through the ranks, the more reassured and complacent they became. After all, what did they have to fear? They didn’t have what Sam wanted or even the power to sway those who did. They were disposable and that protected them. Ruby scans the crowd. Barring herself, the hustler, and the ref, all of them Level Five, there were none higher than a Level Three. She turns her gaze back to the cage where Sam stood over the prone, unmoving form of his latest conquest, arm pulled high in victory by the Ref.
Ruby narrows her eyes, cataloguing his battered body. There are bruises on his cheek and torso; already beginning to heal as the remnants of her blood still in his system works its magic. The hematoma in his right ear will be gone in an hour or two. Good thing too, she thinks. She’s seen the permanent marks this kind of fighting leaves on humans; disfigurements they wear like badges of honor, deformed helix and scapha, signs of a true warrior.
Sam's lack of those marks makes demons even more likely to underestimate him when they first see him. They think he's green. Untested. But they won't think that after tonight. That'd be good news, except that it’s only going to get harder from here. His opponents will be more powerful with every climb in the ranks, which means Sam's gotta keep up. And right now, he's barely standing.
He’s slick with a thick sheen of sweat, his skin reflecting the harsh, fluorescent lighting that washes him out to a sickly, unnatural pallor. He’s too pale, panting open-mouthed, body heaving laboriously as though he’s trying to suck up dirty pond-water through a drinking straw. She probes, senses his weakness. He’d overexerted himself, wasted too much of his strength when he didn’t have to. He sways where he stands, even with support, but he shifts his footing, steadies. She half-expects him to pass out or at least stagger when the Ref finally releases his arm. But if there’s one thing she’s learned in the past few weeks, it is to never, ever, underestimate Sam Winchester. True to his upbringing, and in a manner that would’ve made his father proud, Sam straightens and walks steadily out of the cage, doors slamming behind him as the lights brighten in the stands.
She rises from her seat, steps around knees and legs until she reaches the aisle and rushes in the direction of the locker room. As she runs, her stride unbroken by the knee-high, low-heeled leather boots, she pats the pockets of her too-large borrowed hoodie, feeling for her switchblade. She finds Sam slumped up against a wall inside the locker room and it’s clear that if he stepped away, he’d go straight down. As it is, his legs are visibly quivering and he’s jittery as fuck. She wonders how he even made it there.
“Ruby,” he gasps out, all raw relief, and she can tell from his voice that he has no idea what he wants or needs. Fear rolls off him in sharp, rancid waves. His hands clench and unclench and his eyes are frantic as they seek hers out. “Help me.” He sounds so very, very young and so very, very human. Had she been a newer, less corrupted demon, she might’ve been moved to sympathy.
“Please,” Sam adds as though that one word could grant him everything. She’d been like that, once, before she mucked around in witchcraft and went to Hell and rose through the ranks. Ambition was a commodity in Hell. Everything that’d condemned her to the stake on Earth was a virtue to be valued and exploited. She was born to be a demon.
She works her face into something she hopes resembles concern and presses up close to Sam, closes her hand around his wrist. He’s flushed, still sweating buckets. The pulse beneath her fingers is too quick, like a bird that knows its about to have its head snapped off. He’s shuddering all over and she can see the muscles bunch in his jaw from the strain of not allowing his teeth to chatter. Red dribbles from his nose and he raises a hand absently, smearing the back of it above his lip. The resulting mess makes him look all of two years old.
“Help,” he repeats. “Please.”
::: ::: :::
Ruby's switchblade glimmers in the dim light of the tunnel as she holds it up before him and Sam feels a low, needy sound in the back of his throat. She twirls the knife between her fingers before turning on her heel.
He follows Ruby and her shining metal down the hall, staggering and pushing off the walls to stay on his feet, past the lockers to the showers, where she hustles him into a stall, shoves his back against the wall.
The tiles feel ice-cold against his burning skin and the shivers running through him get worse. He grabs at Ruby's wrists, desperate and craving relief, but too uncoordinated to do anything about it.
"You did so good today," she croons, leaning in close. She brings her blade up to her throat. "You deserve a prize." She slices just above her collarbone, a nice wide cut and Sam feels himself harden just watching the all that red well up. He pulls her towards him and seals his mouth around the wound. The blood burns beautifully against his tongue and he hears himself moaning and god if only he could make the blood flow faster because he's so very, very thirsty.
"That's it," she says, arching back her neck to widen the cut. She brings her hand down to his shorts, slips slender fingers between the elastic and wraps them around his cock. "Drink up, Butterfly."
And he does. He drinks deeply, letting Ruby's blood soothe the aches in his muscles, letting it make him whole. He can feel the tear in his ankle mend itself and his muscles don't hurt anymore. Nothing hurts anymore.
"You did so good today."
Sam ruts against her, the pleasure inside of him building far too fast. His exhaustion's fading, the blood re-energizing every part of him. He growls as Ruby's fingers squeeze tighter and spills release into her hand at the sound of someone else's torment. He swallows one last time and stills, waiting to hear Dean's voice cry out again.
There’s nothing except the rasp of his breathing. Ruby pulls her hand free, fiddles with the knobs on the wall until water starts to rain down form the showerhead above. It takes Sam a few seconds to realize he's still dressed, and he's not sure he cares. He watches his sneakers darken under the spray. Dean was screaming again. That was him screaming. And it hadn't kept Sam from taking what he needed. He wants to believe that he would've stopped if he'd heard Dean earlier. That he would've remembered what he was doing - who he was drinking from. Not just a demon; a demon inside an empty shell of a woman he'd never even met. He knows what Ruby is, knows bone-deep that she's got to have another agenda. Demons lie, demons plot, demons manipulate. And Ruby might be in a pretty package, but she feels just like all the others on the inside. Sam can feel her burnt soul; can see it squirming under her skin when he lets his vision defocus.
"They're moving you up into the Level Four rounds," Ruby says, rubbing lukewarm, soapy water over Sam's shoulders. Her boots are just outside the reach of the water, but a few droplets of water pepper the light fabric of her shirt, giving it dark grey polka dots. "First match is next Tuesday."
Sam meets her eyes, sees the darkness hiding underneath the sclera. "Christo," he whispers.
Ruby flinches, her eyes bleeding black instantly. She shoves at him, frowning. "What was that for?"
Sam reaches behind him, pumps some soap from the dispenser and starts washing under his arms, ignoring her question.
She scoffs. "Fine. You want to play Truth Or Dare?"
He keeps ignoring her, an odd self-satisfied trill running through him at the tone of her voice. He grabs another handful of soap, and is about to massage it into his hair when his head collides with the hard tile behind him. Ruby's got her small fingers around his throat, thumb pushing unpleasantly against his Adam's apple.
"Here's a Truth for you." Ruby sneers. "You're not ready for Level Four. Not even close. They're going to wipe the floor with you unless you step up. You have to be a lot stronger."
Sam grabs her tiny wrist, tries to pull away her hand, but he can't. He meets her eyes instead, challenges her to keep going.
She lets go with a huff. "You want to save Dean? You want to stop Lilith?"
Sam brings his hand to his throat, still glaring at her. "Yes."
"Then here’s a Dare: trust me. You can't do this on your own. But if you want to try, be my guest." With one last look of disgust, she turns her back on him and leaves.
::: ::: :::
Ruby paces the darkened hall outside the weight room the contenders use between fights. She knows Sam’s inside doing something stupid. She'd tried kicking down the door and was thrown six feet down the hallway - the dumbass fucking warded it. She punches the wall, denting the sweating, painted concrete. The action is an unexpected strain. She rubs at her core muscles. It still aches from when she got caught up in the periphery of Sam’s power the other day and the struggle it took to remain rooted in her meatsuit. It hadn’t been easy but she’d given Sam a taste of what was to come - the effort’d knocked him out for three-quarters of an hour and induced a sluggish nosebleed that wouldn’t fully stem for another hour after that. She’d given him today off and instead of resting he's training. Alone. Dumbo was getting a little too cocky and trusting of his feather. The attitude doesn’t suit him.
She’s about to turn on her heel for another length when-
“Hey there,” a syrup-smooth voice says directly in front of her. “Didn't take you for the lovesick puppy type. If I didn't know better, I'd say you looked worried.” Ruby stops in her tracks, her eyes following a pair of brown boots upward to denim jeans, a leather motorcycle jacket that cinches at the waist.
Ruby narrows her eyes. She recognizes this scent, recognizes the face under the skin, but the name eludes her.
“I go by Meg, now,” the curly-haired demon tells her, a slow smile spreading across her features. It's lethal, like a cat that’d caught the canary about to eat its prey. Meg flicks her gaze up and down, taking stock. “Ruby, right?”
Ruby doesn’t acknowledge the question and Meg clucks her tongue. “You always were a little slow on the uptake.” Meg exhales, smiles again. “That's okay, I won't take it personal. Word on the street says you’ve shacked up with Sam Winchester...” And before she can make another comment, Ruby's got her slammed up against the wall, forearm pressed against Meg’s windpipe, point of her demon-killing blade pushing up at the soft flesh at the hollow of the bitch’s throat.
Meg smiles. “So what they say is true.” She lowers her voice to a husky whisper. “You really don't want to piss me off… See…” Another drop in cadence, an incline of the head as though sharing a deep secret between confidants, “I’m on the roster for Level Five and I am so looking forward to it. Sam ‘n’ I, see, we go back a ways and I got something of a beef to pick with him. He and his gem of a brother sent me back to Hell. Twice."
"Better Hell than death," Ruby says, letting go of Meg's throat.
Meg straightens, smoothing down her jacket. "You don't want me to make it even harder on your Sweet Babboo, do you?" She grins. "You know what that cage does to us. What it's doing to him. So,” a pause, a soft exhale of breath she doesn’t need. “What is it gonna be?”
Ruby scowls, lets out a bitter hiss of disgust and backs off, sticking her knife into the top of her boot.
Meg steps away from the wall. “I thought so. Well, ta-rah, Coach. See you in a bit.” She turns, hips swaying, as though to depart, when she suddenly stops in her tracks. Turning her head to look over her shoulder. “Oh, before I forget, Dean Winchester stepped off the rack. Apparently he couldn’t take it. And tonight’s opponent is an old friend of Sam’s. You might want to give him a head’s up. She’s a new Four and got the rage, if you know what I mean…”
::: ::: :::
The mirror in the arena's gym is cracked in places and covered in brown patches where the silver backing has started to deteriorate from decades of moisture and heat. Sam looks himself over as he stands in front of the rack of weights. The gashes and bruises from the last few weeks have all but disappeared, Ruby's blood has been the world's best healing balm, inside and out. His nose still looks a little more crooked than it used to thanks to the break from one of his first fights and his broken ribs have healed, but not all of them evenly. He can see the jagged line on the bottom left, when he leans forward and picks up a pair of dumbbells from the rack.
Within two reps he determines they're too light and switches them out for a heavier pair. The demon blood is making him stronger than a human has any right to be, but then he's never been entirely human, as much as he hates to admit it.
The problem, he thinks, as he starts a set of biceps curls, is that physical strength is nearly entirely irrelevant with demons. The reason he still trains is because the human part of him needs to - he's not as strong physically as the demons are, and if he wants to hold his own, he has to be. In here, he can push his boundaries; learn how to use more than just muscle to move weight. He takes a deep breath, lowers his arms, brings the weights together, and then grabs both dumbbells in one hand, his long fingers just barely wrapping around the second bar.
It's too much. The tendons in his arm tear, sending sharp spikes of pain through him. He should let the weights drop, should stop right there, but he doesn't. He won't. Ruby's words from months ago flood back: This is nothing compared to what your brother is going through, and he clings onto that thought because he knows it's true - he’s heard Dean screaming - and no matter how much he hurts himself it will never begin to compare with Hell. Arteries burst, and for a second his bicep almost separates completely from the bone, but he refuses to stop. He calls on that part of him that Ruby's been feeding - the part that's been getting larger and hungrier every day and tries to bring it to heel - focuses all his energy on pushing that power into his arm, commanding it to fix the damage, to make him strong. But all he gets for his effort is even more agony and a nosebleed. The world goes a little hazy, a little sideways, as the weights drop from his hands, thudding heavily to the floor, just as the door slams open.
"What the hell are you doing, Sam?" Ruby snaps.
He's too busy clutching his damaged arm to pay any attention to her.
"Why would you ever lock that door?" She snarls. "And put wards on it! Are you insane?"
"I had to test something," he says. "I had to try it myself."
She walks around him and drops to her knees so she can get a look at his arm. "What were you testing? How stupid you are?"
She makes to grab for his arm and Sam flinches away, crying out at the pain the movement causes.
"Oh this is just great," she snaps. "Brilliant. Look if you don't want to fight in Level Four, you could've just told me instead of ripping your-"
"I want to fight," Sam says furiously, meeting her eyes. "But I have to be stronger. You said it yourself, they're gonna wipe the floor with me if I don't step up."
"So you let me help you," she says. "Don’t do - whatever this is." She takes his arm, more gently this time, and looks at the bruised area in the fold of his arm, blood from the damaged artery pooling around the swollen tendon.
"You said I had to push past human limitations if I wanted to keep up with them. Said that with enough time and blood I could be just as strong as they are. He glares down at the dumbbells. "Well guess what? I broke like a human." Sam clenches his fists and he immediately regrets the pain that follows. He curls over his arm with a low cry, tears smarting his eyes. He gives himself ten seconds to process the pain and straightens, his breath still sawing in his throat. When he’s able to see straight again, he glares up at Ruby. “The match is tonight.”
"Should've thought of that before you played Mr. Lifto," Ruby comments mildly, not looking up from his purple-black flesh.
Sam scoffs. "When am I going to be stronger?"
"When I teach you how."
"When are you going to teach me?"
"When you get it through your skull that our kind of strength has nothing to do with muscle. You haven't even learned how to process what I’m giving you yet." The implication that there’s more at his disposal hangs in the silence between them. She sighs and runs her fingertips over the steadily darkening bruise. "Come on, let's get you fixed up."
::: ::: :::
Despite Ruby's triage, the repercussions of Sam's experiment are disastrous. His opponent is wearing a female host, a tiny thing who shouldn't be the least bit of a match physically.
Yet somehow he spends more time on the mat this match than he has since he started this life. Every time he gets up, she throws him back down, sometimes with a burst of power he can't avoid no matter how hard he tries and sometimes with her body. Sam uses every trick Ruby has taught him, trying to plant himself firmly where he is, trying to resist her power but she's so damn strong, and he… isn't. When he calls on the power inside of him, he finds it waning far faster than it should be. He's tired, and when she knocks him down for the sixth time that round with a roundhouse kick that connects with his temple he almost doesn't get up, almost decides it’s worth taking a forfeit or a loss.
That is, until she says, "Dean got off the rack tonight, you know."
Sam's spine tenses and he swallows, pushing himself back to his feet. He looks the demon in the eyes. "Meg?"
She scoffs, smiles. "Not quite. Although I must admit she wouldn’t be happy you thought her level was so low." She lifts her hand up and studies her nails, frowning as she picks at a chip in the pearlescent-white polish. She lets her hand drop, looks up at him. "I'm new to this whole thing myself, you know, just a little more time down below than Dean - a month up here, ten years down there. Not much, but it does make a difference.”
Sam’s brain stutters, stalls, and restarts, as he processes the demon’s words. "W-what? What do you mean ten years?"
She laughs, then, high and sharp, and he knows that laugh. "Bela."
"In the flesh." She looks down at her body. "Well, not my flesh, unfortunately, but you know what I mean. It’ll do for now, considering my original one was dog chow." Without warning she runs towards him again, jumps up to deliver a flying kick, and Sam has had just about enough.
He ducks under her legs, grabs her by the ankles and slams her into the mat, hard.
She lands with a sharp oof, and grins up at him, eyes black as pitch. "’Atta boy. Dean would be proud."
"Tell me," Sam says, before he can think better of it. "Tell me about him."
"Oh you don't want me to do that, darling."
"Tell. Me." Sam says, forcing power behind the words.
Bela raises an eyebrow. "Well, if you insist." She punches him in the ribs, rolls away, and jumps to her feet. "He's learning the tools of the trade. Moving his way up the ranks. Level One Trainee." She begins to bounce back and forth on the balls of her feet, getting ready to kick him again.
"No."
"Now why would I lie to you?"
"Because you were a liar when you were alive." Sam begins to gather what remaining power he has, feeding as much of his rage into it as he can.
"I was a thief. There's a difference."
"What did they do to Dean?"
The ref laughs from his spot against the cage fence.
"Oh sweetheart, trust me, you really really don't want to know the answer to that."
She makes her move, but Sam sidesteps her, drops to his knees and holds both of his palms straight out, channeling every drop of power he has left, grabbing hold of the oily blackness inside of her.
Eyes widening in shock, Bela begins to choke.
Sam can feel his vision going, and something hot drips out of his nose. He doesn't have enough left in him to do what he's trying to do, but he doesn't care. There's a pop somewhere near the back of his head, and he's sure a capillary just burst. Stars dance in front of him and he can barely see the cage, or the audience, or the lights. All he can see is the black cloud of Bela's true form as he tears her from her borrowed body. She screams as she's funneled back down to Hell, a circle of red ash forming where he sends her back down.
He can feel himself smiling, just before it all goes black.
::: ::: :::
on to chapter three