In the three months since Houston, Sam and Ruby had gotten into a comfortable routine. They would track the movements of Lilith's minions, capturing and interrogating them if possible. Only a handful of demons were able to provide information, and only time would tell whether the intel provided was actually useful.
They were able to learn that Lilith had teams of demons working on sixty-four tasks around the world. None of the demons that they had questioned knew why she was sending them on these errands or what all of them were. Occasionally, one would know some of the details of another team's task, but it seemed to be pretty unusual for the teams to contact each other directly. Most communication was sent up the chain of command, which involved a level of middle management that separated these teams from Lilith.
If the two of them couldn't capture a demon safely, they would simply kill or exorcise the demons in combat. They had spent a lot of time debating the pros and cons of exorcising demons. Sam was very reluctant to use Ruby's knife as the default because it would kill the human vessel nine times out of ten, but they both knew that every demon sent back to Hell was an opportunity for Lilith to learn about their own activities. Ruby didn't like the idea of leaving a breadcrumb trail of demonic witnesses behind them, but she caved to Sam's convictions as long as they could move on quickly after each exorcism.
Their fear that Lilith would realize the exorcised demons were a valuable source of information against them was realized quickly. When her subordinates began turning up dead or on the wrong plane, she become startled by the systematic attacks and called for an investigation into the matter. It hadn't taken too long for her to find out who was consistently responsible.
By the time Sam and Ruby were able to confirm that Lilith was onto them through interrogation, they had already spent two weeks with demons turning up around every corner. It was a string of ominously bad luck and they tried to be more cautious. But when they got the news that Lilith was actively hunting them while they hunted her, it made them try to cover their tracks that much harder. Both of them wore hex bags at all times to reduce the odds of being found out by a demon.
Another valuable but daunting piece of information that they had learned through their interrogations was that Lilith was keeping an extensive personal guard and changed her location frequently. She knew that she was methodically being pursued and was taking her own precautions. Her measures may have proved enough to avoid normal hunters, but Sam's training with his powers seemed to passively increase the clarity and frequency of his visions. Maybe once or twice a week, Sam would have a vision that would point them in Lilith's direction or reveal another one of her mysterious side projects. This allowed Sam and Ruby to try to disrupt her little projects, but the main priority was always closing in on her location.
All of these factors meant that the pair would find themselves ambushing or being ambushed by groups averaging four demons every few days. Sam utilized his powers almost exclusively when fighting demons, but occasionally carried a shotgun containing salt rounds as back up. Ruby stuck with her knife and a few minor spells when they knew there would be at least three demons. They were able to finish most fights with only a few bruises or cuts, and counted themselves lucky.
Sam felt like pretty soon Lilith would realize that she would need to allot more manpower to stopping them. Ruby had suggested that Lilith's forces might be stretched thin, but they both knew that if she received a decent-sized number of reinforcements from Hell it would only be a matter of time before they faced overwhelming odds.
In their travels pursuing Lilith, on two occasions an obvious case fell into Sam and Ruby's laps. One was a vampire and the other a shifter, but they didn't bother pursuing either case. They had specialized their combat style to the task at hand, and knew they only had a limited amount of time to accomplish their mission. Anyway, Sam didn't want to risk getting involved with hunting again.
On an unremarkable day by their standards, Sam and Ruby had tracked a demon to an abandoned duplex in south Philadelphia. It was the middle of the night and the surrounding homes in the area looked largely uninhabited. The lock on the front door of the duplex was busted, so the two of them cautiously walked in, weapons readied. Sam had his sawed off with salt shells as a precaution since a lone demon seemed too good to be true. Ruby followed him through the first few rooms, both stepping as quietly as possible. He stopped abruptly and she bent her knees, ready to spring forward into any melee that might break out.
Two middle-aged men rounded a corner toward them. One had fair skin, curly red hair, and something between a five o'clock shadow and a proto-beard. The second man had slightly rosier skin with fine black hair, and an old scar across his chin. They were both dressed in jeans and shirts straight out of an L.L. Bean catalog. The two men looked too rural for the desolate urban setting they were standing in. The black-haired one held a shotgun while the redhead appeared unarmed. On instinct Sam reached out with his mind to grab their smoke clouds only to realize with a start that they weren't demons.
The four of them were in something of an accidental standoff. Sam and the man with the shotgun were aiming at each other while Ruby and the other man held still attempting not to startle anyone.
"What are you doing here?" Sam asked.
"It looks like the same thing as you," the unarmed redhead replied.
"You two hunters?" asked the black-haired man holding the shotgun.
"Yeah." Sam felt uncomfortable with that statement. He almost thought of it as a lie. At that point it felt like between him and Ruby they might barely be able to qualify. Technically, they were hunting Lilith, but they weren't really falling into the job description otherwise. But that wasn't the time to think about nuances, let alone voice them. Sam noticed Ruby spared a nervous glanced back at him.
"We thought there might be a demon in the area," Ruby commented, trying to get a conversation going enough to relax the nervous tension.
"Yeah, good luck getting a demon with that little pig sticker." The red haired man chuckled while pointing to her knife.
"It's iron," she lied, but wanted to show some competence without disclosing the value of her literally-secret weapon.
"Can we agree to lower our weapons? I don't want to be watching you while that demon sneaks up on my backside," the man holding the shotgun asked.
"Sure," Sam agreed.
They both slowly lowered their guns and everyone seemed to visibly breathe a bit easier.
"Well thank God for that." The redhead sighed. "I'm Matt. He's Riley."
"Kathy," Ruby offered.
"Keith," Sam followed her lead in giving the hunters the aliases they'd been using since finding out that Lilith was tracking them. Matt nodded a little smile to them, but Riley just watched Ruby and Sam cautiously.
"I'm actually glad we ran into you two. We found something that—well, we just don't understand it. Maybe you two could help us try to figure out what we've got? It's confusing as hell," Matt said as he gestured to the doorway he and Riley had just come through.
Sam and Ruby looked at each other uncertainly, but slowly followed the two men through to the other room. Sam entered the ruined bedroom first and Ruby followed him… until she couldn't. In an instant her eyes grew wide with fear. Sam had turned to look at her and took in the devil's trap drawn onto the ceiling just inside of the door jamb. He lifted his shotgun and swung to face the men, but they already had their weapons aimed at him. Riley had his shotgun trained on Sam and Matt now had a pistol in hand.
"Drop the shotgun," Matt ordered in a calm voice. Sam slowly placed the shotgun on the ground and raised his hands.
"I told you he wasn't actually a demon," Riley said to Matt without taking his eyes off Sam.
"What do you want?" Sam asked as he started working through the implications of the last statement.
"From you or your demon pals, nothing." He gestured at Ruby with the shotgun. "You see, we're just on a job."
With Matt safely in control of the situation, Riley lowered his shotgun into a holster, then pulled a flask from his back pocket. Ruby held up her hands and began shaking her head.
"Guys, you don't want to do this—" she managed to get out before being splashed with holy water. Her body jerked backwards slamming into the unseen wall of the devil's trap before collapsing to the ground. She screamed uncontrollably. Hissing steam curled off her body as she shook and spasmed on the floor.
Sam wanted to throw up. His left hand unconsciously reached toward her, until he heard the pointed cough from the man with the pistol trained on him. He was shaking slightly when he turned to face the men. He was caught up in a flurry of rage, fear, and adrenaline. To say that he hated having guns pointed at him was obvious and an understatement, but that wasn't the thing that was really driving him to the brink. It was the sound of Ruby's screams. His friend was being tortured.
"Please, stop! She's not like other demons! She—" Sam's pleas were stopped by Matt adjusting his posture to aim directly between Sam's eyes.
"Like we'd listen to you! Sam Winchester! Everyone knows you opened the Devil's Gate! You keep showing up in towns with demons. He's working with them; Clare was right." The last statement was directed at Riley. Matt's eyes flicked to Ruby for a split second. She was crumpled on the ground. He smiled a little when his eyes returned to Sam.
Riley splashed Ruby with another swing of holy water. He then put the now empty flask back into his pocket and withdrew a piece of paper. Matt's smile broadened at this turn. Sam's heart was hammering in his chest as he realized that the sheet was an exorcism.
"Let's just talk about this. There has to be something we can do to prove—"
"You don't get it. You aren't talking your way out of this. It's not personal. It's just business."
It hit Sam hard, the realization that they were focused on him. They had come for him, on business—hunter business. This was like Gordon Walker all over again, but these two had gotten the drop on them. Ruby was completely out of commission and moments away from being sent back to Hell. He was unarmed and he'd only been training to use powers that worked on demons. He was not prepared to be facing off against one armed hunter, let alone two.
Riley began reciting the exorcism. Ruby started screaming anew and convulsed, clutching at her chest and throat. Her eyes turned black. Sam could see small wisps of black smoke creeping from her mouth. She was struggling against it, but her smoke couldn't overcome the pull of the exorcism. Sam knew the exorcism incantation by heart and panic set in as he realized Riley was only a few seconds from completing it.
Something snapped in Sam. Without thinking he suddenly threw his hands forward. The two hunters were hurled backward across the room, slamming into the far wall before collapsing to the floor.
Before Sam could realize what had happened his vision became blurred with pain. His eyes were watering and not entirely focused. He staggered, then fell into a kneeling position. Looking down at his body he didn't see any injuries, but blood started dripping from his face onto his shirt. For the briefest moment he worried that Matt had shot him in the head, but reaching up Sam discovered that the blood was coming from his nose and left tear duct. The pain he was feeling wasn't that of a gunshot, but more like he had been hit in the face with a sledgehammer. His brain was throbbing in waves of pain that seemed to wash away any thought that tried to be more than a few words long. His sense of balance was barely enough to keep him upright and his vision tinted red from the blood pooling around his left eye. He had psychically strained himself before, but this was an entirely new level of injury, and it came at the worst possible time.
He looked over at the two hunters who were still on the ground across the room. The pistol had been knocked out of Matt's hand, but Sam couldn't see where it had landed. He glanced at Ruby. She was shaking violently as she struggled to push herself up into a crawling position. Her right arm gave way and she fell back down clumsily. Her clothes were still damp causing small coils of holy-water-induced steam to come off of her as she tried to move. Sam began to reach out for her, but stopped when he heard Riley groan and begin to move slightly.
Sam threw himself forward onto his hands and knees to crawl toward his shotgun a few feet away. He knew that his salt rounds would be ineffective at subduing Riley even if they would hurt like a bitch. Instead he grabbed the shotgun, turned around and fired both salt shells into the border of the devil's trap above Ruby, breaking it.
He turned back to the hunter, who was now getting into a kneeling position and taking in the scene. Sam knew that his sense of balance was ruined by his massive headache, so he didn't bother trying to stand. Instead he rushed the hunter in a chaotic, almost-feral crawling charge. In the last second of the charge Sam swung the shotgun in an attempt to hit Riley with the butt of the gun.
Riley saw the swing coming and grabbed for the length of the shotgun. The second he had gripped the gun, the hunter rolled backward using Sam's own momentum against him. Sam pitched forward as Riley swung a knee upward into Sam's torso. There was a distinct snapping sound as one of Sam's ribs broke from the impact. Sam fell onto the hunter and they were caught in a grapple.
They fought for control of the empty sawed-off, both also working their knees and elbows to land a few good hits each. After a few seconds of struggling to get a better position, Sam was able to knee Riley in the crotch hard. Taking advantage of the powerful hit, Sam twisted the shotgun as he yanked it from the hunter's hands. He swung the gun down swiftly, hitting Riley in the head with the butt of the gun. The hunter stopped moving.
Before Sam could think to do anything else, Matt tackled him from behind. Sam slammed to the dirty wooden floor with a tearing pop, followed by burning pain emanating from his left shoulder. He was pinned to the ground and his empty shotgun had been knocked out of reach. Matt was on top of him, punching at Sam's face. Sam did the best he could to block or dodge the hits, but his left arm seemed to be dislocated, leaving his left side vulnerable.
He had taken three hits to the face before he was able to catch Matt's incoming left hook in his right hand. Sam tensed his body, which made his broken rib and head scream in pain. Gripping the hunter's fist tightly, Sam pushed upward. Matt's arm had gone rigid in an attempt to deliver the full force of his body into the punch, and he was too surprised by Sam's move to think of relaxing his elbow and shoulder. Sam pushed forward using his right leg and hip to roll the slightly smaller hunter off of him, like one might push over a statue.
Sam and Matt started scrambling into better fighting stances when they both noticed the pistol lying a few feet away below a broken chair. They each dove for it. Limbs tangled as bloody hair fell in Sam's eyes. Another loud crack that came without pain signaled to Sam that his elbow had probably broken Matt's collarbone. But in the last few inches of the fight for the pistol, Sam's right arm was pinned and the hunter closed the distance first.
Sam struggled, shifting his weight against the hunter, hoping to knock the gun loose in the chaos of the melee. They rolled once more on the ground, freeing Sam's right arm. He swung a fist at the hunter's head, but its impact was weak. A moment before his fist connected, Sam heard a gunshot and felt the energy start to drain out of his punch. Only the momentum of the swing stopped his arm from simply dropping to the ground.
His head had been a foggy mess before, but now everything was becoming saturated and sounds started growing muffled. Sam heard Ruby shouting in what sounded like rage, another two gunshots, and the distinct thwack of something very hard hitting meat. The last thing that passed through Sam's mind was the sensation of feeling a small, cold, damp hand touching his hot and bloodied cheek.