Page 7 of Demon Hunter

By the time I find the elevator, they’ve caught up to me. The massive main foyer of the hospital is eerily quiet. There’s a young woman sitting on a cushioned bench by the windows, her eyes red-rimmed and a sleeping toddler sprawled across her lap. Two older men are talking in hushed tones by a door that has a sign saying ER This Way. But the gift shop and the café are shuttered and dark.

The fourth floor is a different story. The lights here are bright, and even though it’s not as busy as I know it would be in the daytime, there’s still a sense of bustle. We follow Marc—and the blue line painted on the floor—to the ICU. The doors are locked, and the desk beside them is empty, but there’s a doorbell. Ian pushes it three times fast, drops his hand, then lifts it to press again. The nurse who opens the door a minute later is wearing a murderous expression.

“Sir, visiting hours are?—”

“My brother’s here,” he interrupts. “My best friend, I mean. His brother did the paperwork so we could sit with him.”

Her face doesn’t change. “What’s the patient’s name?”

“Matthias Coates. C-O-A-T-E-S. His brother’s Gabriel.”

“Dr. Howard said we should come,” I add.

She doesn’t reply, just closes the door and walks back toward a counter. Ian and I crowd around the little windows, trying to see what she’s doing. Typing something into a computer, from the looks of it.

“What’s taking so long?” Ian mutters. “Even Marc types faster than that.”

“I do not type,” Marc intones.

“How’s Matt doing?” I whisper to him. “Any change?”

The look on his face questions my insolence for daring to speak to him, but then his eyes narrow and he inhales deeply.

Fear races through me. “Has something happened to him?”

Ian whirls around, but Marc holds up a hand, his eyes still on me. “There has been no change. I’m monitoring him. Once I can see him clearly, I’ll begin what can be done without arousing suspicion.”

I nod, then clear my throat. “Sounds good. Let me know if you need a distraction or anything.” I can fake a panic attack if I need to. It probably won’t even be all that fake.

“She’s coming back,” Ian hisses, and I turn, my heartbeat picking up. Soon I’ll see Matt. It doesn’t matter if he’s hooked up to machines; I need toseehim.

The nurse opens the door again. There’s a tablet in her hand, though I can’t see the screen from this angle. “Could I see some ID?”

Ian and I scramble to show her. Marc takes his time, then straightens his cuff. I realize for the first time that he’s wearing a suit. Who the fuck puts on a suit to come to a hospital in the middle of the night?

She compares our IDs to her screen, then hands them back to us. “Two visitors at a time only, I’m afraid, though you can take turns. There’s a visitor lounge around that corner where the third person can wait.”

My stomach drops to my shoes. There’s no question that Ian will go, and normally I’d challenge Marc for the right to go with him—but Marcneedsto go. He needs to save Matt.

I swallow hard. “I’ll w?—”

“The three of us will enter,” Marc says smoothly, his voice dark and drawling and… itchy? Why does my brain suddenly itch? “You will make an exception this one time, due to the circumstances.”

The nurse nods and steps back, holding the door wide. “Of course.”

Holy fuck. Holyfuck. Did Marc just mind control the nurse?

From the stunned glance Ian gives me, he’s thinking the same thing—and it’s obviously not something he’s seen his boyfriend do before. The hunter in me—thehumanwho loathes the thought of that kind of violation—wants to protest, but I guess I’m not as good a person as I thought, because I don’t.

Not when it means I get to see Matt.

Instead, I swallow my bile and ethics and follow the nurse into the ICU.

“I’ll need to ask you to turn off your cell phones,” she says once the door is closed behind us, and Ian and I immediately obey. She looks at Marc.

“I didn’t bring it.”

Part of me wonders how anybody could leave home without their phone, but I guess a higher demon doesn’t exactly need wireless technology at his fingertips.

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