Page 23 of Demon Hunter

“Babe,” Ian complains, “you’re supposed to be convincing my family how likeable you are.”

Marc tilts his head. “I am. Those are all things I can do to them, but didn’t. Not even to Connor.”

“Yay for me,” Connor mutters. “Okay, so… don’t liquefy my organs, but what if itisa higher demon, but they wanted it to look like humans did it?”

“An interesting thought.” Marc’s brows rise. “But still… I’m unconvinced. Why not ensure his death, then? A few more blowswould have done the trick—or a solid blow to the head with a blunt object.”

“He was close to dead when he was found,” Gabe points out. “Maybe they thought he already was.”

Marc shakes his head. “A higher demon would not be fooled. Humans cannot sense life, but my kind can.”

“Interrupted, maybe? Someone else was close and they had to run off?” Connor suggests, but even he sounds like he doesn’t believe that. A higher demon wouldn’t need to run away from a vagrant or horny couple who stumbled upon the scene. They could just… wipe some memories.

“We still haven’t answered Matt’s original question,” Dyl points out. “Can a higher demon even hack?”

Marc shrugs lightly. “Theoretically, yes. With time to study and learn, anything a human is capable of is something we could do. But if I were in this scenario, I would not waste time learning such a skill for this one purpose. Instead I would merely plant the job sheet in the system with a thought. And then I would ensure the human was actually dead.”

Dylan’s eyes widen in horror. “You can do that? Interfere with a secure systemwith a thought?”

And here I was thinking he was distressed by the repeated mention of my potential death.

Ian makes a disgusted sound. “He sends emails and text messages without typing, so it’s not that much of a stretch.”

“But a secure system,” Dyl protests, and Marc sighs.

“It’s a simple matter of intention. If I intend to bypass security measures, then I will. Would you care for a demonstration?”

Chapter 10

Dylan

Ademonstration?Of how he can so easily circumvent my security that it might as well be useless? “Yeah. Create a document in my most secure folder. It’s called?—”

He holds up a hand. “I don’t need to know what it’s called. You can check now.”

Well, fuck. It can’t have been that easy for him. I have that folder set up so that if anyone even tries to get into it, I’ll get notifications—and the folder will wipe.

I log in to the folder, entering the twenty-seven-digit password and giving the camera access for the facial recognition scan, then skim down the list of files. All still here, and all mi?—

“Found it?”

Since I never would have named a fileI told you, human,I’m going to say yes. Out of curiosity, I open it. Just in case it’s not blank.

It’s not.

In fact, it’s a 576-page document. In Latin. I read the first few lines and swallow sickly.

“You could have proved your point without the demonic manuscript.” I close the doc, but as much as I want to, I don’t delete it. I need to get into the code later and see how he did this.

“It’s a biography, actually,” he corrects. “And although it begins in quite an exciting manner, it becomes boring rather quickly. The demon who wrote it was a tiresome, pompous sort.”

“Exciting?” Gabe asks, and I shake my head. “Oh. That kind of exciting.”

“But he did it?” Matt’s voice has an edge. “He got past your security?”

“Yeah.” I look at Marc. “How did you bypass my safeguards?”

“Intent is the key,” he says, sounding put upon. “My intention was to create the document in your most secure folder without alerting you that I was doing so, and that’s what I did.”

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