A man discovers that when demons exist, only angels are equipped to deal with them.

This is a story idea that had been bouncing around in my head for over a year and every month or two my muse keeps going back to it so I decided to finally give into her nagging. When I’d originally come up with this idea, I’d envisioned it as an anime series.

Part 1

I leaned back in the passenger seat of my vehicle, silently listening to the radio. There wasn’t any music playing or anything like that, though there was a dispatcher who’d be pissed if we didn’t respond when called.

My partner Dom sat behind the steering wheel of the ambulance, focusing on the traffic much the way I was focusing on the radio. Dominic Vincenti was a large and brutish looking man whom most people would automatically assume was something like a boxer or mob enforcer. Most people would never guess that he was a very professional EMT or that he was actually a big softy who actually kept teddy bears in the ambulance to comfort scared kids.

“Hey kid,” Dom said, annoying me with the fact that he kept calling me ‘kid’ even though I was twenty-six years old. In fact, I was pretty sure that he called me that because it annoyed me, though Dom did have a knack of sticking everyone with nicknames.

“Yeah, old man,” I responded pleasantly.

Dom chuckled at that, probably due to the fact that he wasn’t even forty yet. “Are you still thinking about the blonde yesterday?”

“Not really,” I lied.

Yesterday, Dom and I had gotten a call which had left me a bit shaken, though I’d seen things much worse in the year I’d been working this job. A woman had been involved in a domestic violence situation and had several broken bones and multiple lacerations. It wasn’t her physical condition that had gotten to me so much as the fact that we’d taken the same woman to the hospital just a couple months earlier. In spite of being put in the hospital by her husband, she’d gone right back to him, only to get hurt even worse.

I’d been pissed by the situation, and though Dom hadn’t said so, I knew that he was just as upset as I was. In fact, I suspected that if the cops hadn’t been present, Dom would have given the husband a matching set of injuries. Dom might be a big softy most of the time, but there were certain things that could make him just as dangerous as he looked.

“I just hated seeing that,” I finally said. “I mean, you’d think she would have left him after the first time.”

Dom nodded at that, scowling as he did so. “People don’t always make sense,” he told me with a snort. “And some people never seem to learn.” I wasn’t quite sure if he was talking about the wife, the husband, or possibly himself.

Since I didn’t want to talk about that anymore right now, I asked, “So, how’s Mothra doing?”

Mothra was the nickname he’d given to his sister-in-law, who he described as a very large woman who seemed to think she was a dainty butterfly. He loved telling stories about how she accidentally broke nearly everything she came in contact with, though I’m not sure how much was exaggeration and how much was completely made up.

“She’s all right,” Dom responded with a chuckle. This his expression went serious, which was very odd considering the topic. “Damn lucky to be alive though.”

I was a little surprised that statement since Dom would usually start off by making a joke about her. I hesitated a moment before asking, “What do you mean?”

Dom didn’t answer right away, but after nearly half a minute, he said, “One of her coworkers went demon.”

“Holy shit,” I blurted out in shock. “At work?”

“No,” Dom responded, shaking his head. “Killed her own family and then destroyed half the neighborhood before she was taken down.”

“Damn,” I said, not sure what else I could say to that.

Dom nodded. “Yeah. If she’d gone demon at work instead of at home…” He didn’t say anymore but he didn’t need to. If Mothra’s coworker had gone demon while at work, then Mothra probably would have been killed. Or even worse, she might have become a demon too.

Demons were a very real threat and had been for the last eight years, ever since the first ones had appeared. Of course, they weren’t real demons, at least not the kind that supposedly came from Hell. However, the term ‘demon’ was accurate enough for what these monsters were that it had stuck and become the common term that everyone used.

“So, how’s the girlfriend going?” Dom abruptly asked me, obviously eager to change the topic. The subject of demons was just as depressing as the one of the blonde from yesterday so I was glad to talk about something else.

“Not too bad,” I told Dom with a shrug. “But honestly, I don’t think we’ll be together for much longer. Cindy hasn’t said anything, but I’m pretty sure she’s got her eyes on someone else.”

“Sorry to hear that, kid,” Dom responded. “Are you sure she isn’t just playing a game to get your attention?”

“Nope,” I responded with a chuckle. “But she has been complaining a lot about my hours since the swing shift doesn’t leave me a lot of time to spend with her.”

I was about to say more when the dispatcher called for us on the radio. “We just got received a report of a violent assault over on Harrison Avenue,” she said. “The police are already in route…”

Without a word, Dom turned on the flashing lights and sped up the ambulance. The traffic began moving out of our way, at least a little. However, in a busy city there was usually too much traffic to quickly clear a path, not to mention a lot of people who were reluctant to move until we were right on their asses.

When we reached Harrison Avenue, we saw the police lights about a half block ahead of us. Before we could get any closer, the air was suddenly filled with the deafening sound of an old school air raid siren. Dom slammed on the breaks, as did half the cars on the road. The other half were trying to turn around which only resulted in a massive traffic jam that left everyone frozen.

“Oh shit,” I exclaimed, knowing exactly what that siren meant. It was a demon siren, warning that a demon was believed to be in the area and announcing that we should get away or into hiding as quickly as possible. Most of the other drivers were already responding to this by jumping out of their cars and running to the buildings that lined the street.

“We’re stuck,” Dom snarled, slamming his hand onto the steering wheel in frustration.

I stared at the chaos outside the window, briefly wondering whether we should just hunker down inside the ambulance and wait for this to blow over or if we should make a run like everyone else was. Dom decided for me by getting out of the ambulance so I followed him.

“Come on,” I called out to Dom, pointing to the nearest doorway which was for an office building.

A loud roar suddenly filled the air and a moment later a figure fell from the sky and smashed into the top of a car. The figure stood up, revealing itself to be a demon. I froze, staring at him in horror. He was about seven feet tall and mostly human in shape, though there was no mistaking him for a human. He had green skin, a mouth that was far too wide and was full of sharp looking teeth, and then there were his hands…or lack of. At the elbows, his arms formed it two long boney blades that resembled the arms of a praying mantis.

The demon let out a strange hissing roar and ten stabbed one of his sword arms right through the top of the car and into the person inside. Then it leapt to another car and began to frantically slash at the roof, slicing it to ribbons.

“Let’s get out of here,” I exclaimed.

“Good idea,” Dom agreed, only to pause and stare at a little girl who was cowering behind a car, apparently having been separated from her parents in the confusion. “Damn…”

Without a word, Dom ran straight to the little girl and picked her up so that he could carry her to safety. The demon saw Dom and jumped at them, driving a blade right through Dom’s back. The little girl was thrown back and hit the ground where she screamed in panic. That just seemed to draw the demon’s attention.

“Dom,” I cried out in horror at the sight of my friend lying face down in a pool of blood.

My outcry drew the demon’s attention away from the little girl and towards me. I gulped, feeling my heart race in terror. I turned and ran, expecting to be attacked from behind at any moment. But then I heard gunfire followed by the roar of the demon.

I stopped and dropped down behind a car, peeking my head out enough to see that people had finally arrived to fight the demon. I was a little startled to realize that there were only three soldiers and they were all women, wearing tight black body armor and carrying large guns. However, they were approaching the demon almost without fear and opening fire.

The demon jumped to the side, leaping an amazing distance and hitting the side of one of the buildings, then he bounced off and shot right towards one of the women. It looked like I was going to go right past her, then he lashed out with his long bladed arm and sliced right through her side. She screamed and dropped to the ground while the demon jumped up and launched himself at a cop who was standing back with his gun in hand, looking as though he was about to piss himself. I understood that feeling completely.

I was thankful that the demon was moving away from me with the two other women chasing after it, but I certainly didn’t feel safe. I wanted to turn take advantage of this opportunity to run my ass off before I ended up dead like Dom, but I couldn’t bring myself to do that. My eyes went to the female soldier who’d been sliced open while saving my life. I grimaced and started towards her. No matter how scared I was, I was still and EMT and this was a woman who needed immediate medical treatment.

When I reached the woman, I saw that she’d been injured even worse than I thought. The demon’s blade had cut right through her lightweight armor and sliced through her side almost to her spine. There was blood everywhere and I’d left my protective gloves back in the ambulance. Intellectually, I knew I should go back and get them in order to protect myself, but this woman didn’t have the time to wait so I immediately dropped down beside her and went to work. She was in pretty rough shape, but there was still a small chance she could be saved.

The first thing I did was remove her helmet so that I could check her pulse and breathing. She was a beautiful brunette, and to my surprise, much younger than I would have guessed. She couldn’t have been much more than eighteen or nineteen. However, I didn’t pay her appearance much attention and instead focused on her condition. I tried pealing her armor back enough to reach her wound, though it wasn’t easy. I needed to stop her bleeding and try keeping her alive until we could get her to the hospital.

To my surprise, the woman seemed to stabilize much more quickly than I ever could have imagined. And as I worked to bandage her wound and stop the bleeding, I realized that she wasn’t hurt quite as bad as I’d first thought. Still, I remained focused on keeping her alive, not allowing myself to think about my dead friend or the fact that people were fighting a demon just a short distance away. At the moment, this task was all that mattered.

Eventually, I heard someone yell out, “All right, the demon is down.” There was a noticeable sense of relief in the air, but I didn’t get up to get a better look.

A minute later, I noticed a group of soldiers coming towards me. These weren’t the women in the tight black armor but were a group of men who were wearing what looked like SWAT gear. I let out a sigh of relief, thankful that help had arrived.

“She needs immediate medevac,” I called out, nodding to the woman on the ground.

The soldiers all stopped and didn’t approach any closer. Instead, one of them gestured and suddenly all of them raised their guns and pointed them straight at me. I froze, staring at the weapons with a mixture of fear and confusion. After I’d just tried saving that woman, this was not the kind of reaction I was expecting.