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His heart thumping wildly with panic in his chest, his head screaming at him to take another breath, Crispin Huttgart dug his nails into the wooden slats of Ember's kitchen floor and gritted his teeth, deciding that the decision to exist or not should be his alone and nobody else's.

He remembered when Anar had squared his feet in his trusty New Rock boots back at that pool hall, when Matlock's hired heavies had arrived to rough them up, carrying crude weaponry and fully intent on causing grievous bodily harm. Anar didn't lie down and squirm – no - Anar fought back. He'd lobbed heavy pool tables at them and fed the incapacitated ugly imps to his astral cat.

He watched as the aardvarkian director of Hell slid his tongue into Ember's welcoming mouth and moved his hands around her shapely body, rubbing and squeezing as they kissed. He had her in his grip in more ways than one; she was entranced, enchanted. Submitting completely to his evil will. Probably believing she was kissing his son and forgetting all about the manipulative scheme that involved her bringing Anar out of his hiding place so he could ensnare him once again.

He gripped the leg of a dining chair. In one last exertion of effort before he was a pile of paperwork for the resurrection office, Crispin hurled it at the bastard with full force. His magic may not be strong enough to compete with Peregrin, but sometimes all you needed was brute strength!

In among the buzzing in his ears, the thumping inside his head and the hysterical inner monologue he had going on: telling himself that this was it, and he was actually going to die and it would be final and eternal... there was a mighty crash and an angry scream.

In the fading light of his eyes, he could see Ember's hands fly, could see her face turn vicious, could feel the invigorating, life-giving rush of air into his body as blue sigils illuminated the small living space, dazzling mystical signs bursting forth from a metallic compact she brandished in her small, dainty hands.

It was a pocket-sized summoning circle. Her protective wards repelled the tall, suited Director, sending him skidding away from her while her words whipped up a link to the Underworld that was going one way.

Down.

With a feminine snarl and a final command, Peregrin Warlock was banished back to Hell from whence he came.

Crispin's gulps of breath were broken up with sobs. His lungs were on fire. His blood was rushing with enough pressure to cause a steady trickle to escape down his philtrum until it pooled onto his bottom lip, a slick, sticky crimson puddle that tasted of pennies. He curled up into the foetal position, still on the cold hard floor, trembling and shaking.

Dying up here in the mortal realm was a risk every visiting demon took, but you could use your powers and that should be enough to keep you intact. Being attacked in this realm by a higher-powered evil entity almost always proved fatal, and this was not lost on the wimpy human as he continued to inhale and exhale while bleeding steadily.

Ember's shoes appeared and he looked up through tear-studded eyes.

"Didn't think you had it in you. Throwing a chair at a Director? Ballsy." She offered a hand and pulled him up, leading him to the lounge and a sofa where he sat, rubbing his limbs as they tingled.

He helped himself to a tissue from the Kleenex box and mopped his nose. "A - Anar was always throwing shit. He... he hated his dad. I'm beginning to see why now."

Ember wiped at her lips with her sleeve, scrubbing roughly to remove any trace of the aardvark's contact. "I should have banished him straight away as soon as I saw him,” she tutted, crossly, “I never learn. All demons are dodgy, but the bigwigs? They're... insidious. They get inside your head. They find an opening and then ram a metal bar into it and prise you apart. But you already know that. He exploited your friendship with Anar. Took full advantage of your meekness and used you."

Crispin pulled a face and tried to find a way to argue, though he immediately realised he had no rebuttal to her statements and shrugged. Deep down, he was rather proud of himself for fighting back. If he ever saw Anar again, he would tell him all about how he threw a kitchen chair at his rotten father. Maybe not mention he was dying at the time and ruin what little street cred Crispin had. "He'll soon be back - for all of us. We need to warn Anar. I guess it can't be that hard to find a country castle close to Stonehenge, right?"

Ember wasn't so sure this was a good plan, "I don't think it's wise to lead him straight to him."

"He knows where Anar is! Warlock Court isn't some secret hideout or underground lair. Peregrin tried to use us to do his dirty work for him, like all the Directors, they don't do any real work themselves if they can help it. He will get Anar by hook or by crook; just because he isn't welcome at Warlock Court does not mean he isn't prepared to kick down the door and knock ten shades of shit out of the defenceless bugger. Once his cooldown time is up from being banished he'll straight up murder the poor sod if he has to."

"Yeah, you're right..." she sighed, "and a Director will have a very short cooldown time indeed. How are you feeling? Suppose it's a bit weird being back in the mortal realm, isn't it? Your body takes up old habits. You feel vulnerable. Not the same as being summoned where you have the protection of your contract. Mind you, not even that can save you from Anar's cat."

Crispin's face lit up, "you met his cat, too? Such a beautiful creature. Terrifying, but beautiful. Scared my family imp something silly. I mean, really, when you think about it, with those dinosaur pals of his and his magical pets, we shouldn't worry about him too much. And that bag he had that gave him everything he could ever want. I was well jealous of that bag."

Ember frowned, "I didn't know about a bag of holding. Mind you, it was all a while ago for me."

"It was last week for me," Crispin snorted. "What an adventure! He crashed his Ferrari through a Director's front gate while I was sleeping and hit Frank Matlock with a cricket bat by all accounts. Then waltzed out of Hell after setting fire to the office building."

Ember blinked. "And his dad thinks he's better off hanging out down there?"

"Huh, sure, imagine Anar causing havoc up here? Your people would be detaining him in a heartbeat."

"Hmmm," it was a very good point. Any sniff of magic that wasn't issued by the Council in amulet form was sure to bring trouble. Even the demon's powers would be setting off sensors back at the Council Headquarters. The Council didn't like demons. That was why they employed demonologists such as Ember. They wanted all magic to be regulated by them. It was dangerous stuff, especially in the wrong hands, and let's face it, you couldn't get wronger than a servant of Satan himself. Now there were Hell workers biting her boss and a member of the Inner Circle on the warpath.

"You going to be ok for the drive to Wiltshire?" she asked, kindly, "It's a fair distance even down the motorway. I can't request a Gate with this short notice. Don't even know exactly where we're going, neither."

Crispin nodded. It was only right; after all, his long-eared aardvark chum wouldn't hesitate to help him if he was in a scrape and could get something out of it. The time for being a wet blanket was over; he'd taken quite a shine to this lovely half-elf and if a bit of bravado would impress her then he was going to do his best! Anar had probably moved on since all that trouble, anyway. They'd not spoken about each other's love lives much back in the office. True, Ember seemed to have a thing for grey donkey-demons, but Crispin knew he was pretty good-looking, too. For a human, at least. He'd made sure of it! Spent a fortune on his teeth and a personal trainer back home. He actually had a six-pack that wasn't cans of Carling Black Label from the local off-licence.

They locked the door behind them and headed back to the Corsa as a light drizzle began to rain down from the gloomy skies. They would have to fill up with fuel first, both for the car and for themselves. It was going to be an interesting morning.

A roar shook the building, a noise of anger and frustration that convinced all those who heard it that this was not any of their business and they should keep their heads down and concentrate on what they were doing and absolutely not, under any circumstance, investigate further.

Banished demons were usually in quite a state when they poofed back into Hell, in the processing centre to be exact. They needed five minutes to punch a wall, or have a good shout, that sort of thing. Very cathartic. Occasionally, they were missing bits entirely but that was ok; once they were in the safety of Hell there was no danger of real death. Even those extremely unfortunate workers who came back as a greasy puddle or a pile of cinders could be reanimated with the correct paperwork. They may have a touch of PTSD afterwards, but who cares - these are demons, not real people. No-one in their right mind signs their name on the dotted line for a Hell contract and expects a nurturing workplace environment.

"MERKRENNNNN!!"

The windows rattled. Pens paused. That name rang a bell; it belonged to one of the Inner Circle's rabbit-like imp servants. Processing clerks mentally evaluated just who was going to be the poor sap who had to present the after-banishment paperwork to a Director. 'Not me,' was the general consensus. But if nobody did, and the Director was left in the holding room on his own for more than, say, five minutes, then heads would roll. Ugly, horned, clerk heads. They licked their thin lips; they could roll a dice. They could draw lots. They could all gang up on the weakest and bully him until he submitted to peer pressure. You had to have a little fun while at work, after all.

Merkren had been having a nice time with the other lower-level underlings, playing cards. He'd hoped his daft grey boss would be gone for another couple of months, like usual. Director Warlock never stuck around for long, even if he did like giving Merkren a million and one orders while he was here; luckily, he never checked up on any of them in any hurry.

The red, rodent-like imp was not expecting to find his master in the holding cell. The small, hunch-backed servant was also not expecting him to be seething mad and wrapping his grey hands tightly around his neck after Merkren had patiently explained that he hadn't found out anything useful about the Crowley's yet.

He was struggling in the demon’s vice-like grip and high off the ground when a clerk appeared at the cell boundary with a form for Director Warlock to fill in. Hell adored filing systems. The whole process of creating a form using a computer, printing it out onto paper, filling it in with black pen and then submitting the information back into a computer again while placing the original document inside a paper wallet, then stuffing it inside a metal filing cabinet organised alphabetically and chronologically was what they did best.

His master was having none of it. No sooner was the containment spell removed and the A4 sheets handed over, Peregrin was storming off, knocking the forms out of the clerk's hands with a huff, sweeping up the unlucky clerk by the ears while travelling, striding into the small processing office where the luckier workers were waiting to hear the demise of their sacrifice. The aardvark demon swept his hand over a random desk, sending the computer, keyboard and mouse flying, along with all the bits that were strewn about on it, messily. He growled and snarled with feral wrath, picking up a massive wall stapler with bolt-action, holding Merkren down onto the now empty worktop whereupon he promptly began firing metal staples into the struggling servant’s creased-up face. "Fucking useless, all of you!" He then lifted up the clerk and did the same thing to him but with his hands, trapping the crying, screeching member of staff to the desk as he began to bleed.

The remainder of the processing clerks turned tail and fled.