“You cannot face the Hunters of the Secret Guard, my son. Go north and hide. They will not follow you into the frozen wastes. Please, you must escape,” his desperate father begged. “Do not allow my life’s work to come to naught.”

“I will not,” he answered. Father did not understand his true purpose. Father had given him a mortal form and prepared him for the world. He had been taught the word gratitude, but he had never really understood what it meant until now. He would never see Konrad Dippel again. “Goodbye, Father.”

He walked straight toward the main door.

“Not that way! The Hunters will destroy you.”

“They will try.” He decided that he did not care for these . . . Monster Hunters.

He flung the door open and entered the world.

Today

Franks saw the sign.

CAZADOR, ALABAMA, POPULATION 682.

He had driven here from West Virginia, sticking to back roads whenever possible, wearing another man’s skin stretched over his face whenever he’d had to use the freeways or highways that might have had traffic cameras. The mask had itched. He had ditched his last car and stolen a new one in Tennessee. He suspected that he was clear. It was doubtful that STFU would expect him to go here of all places. Why would a monster go directly into a den of Monster Hunters?

The drive had given him time to think. It was time wasted that would have been much better spent destroying his enemies. Thinking caused doubts to form, doubts about his strategy, doubts about his decisions, and most of all, doubts about The Deal. He was allowed to exist as a tool for taking life, not creating it. He had a son. What did that mean? Franks wasn’t big on looking for deeper meaning.

The Creator had a sense of humor. Franks did not like being the butt of some cosmic joke. It really ticked him off.

Franks passed the country road that would take him to the MHI compound. The item he required was there. He had seen it stored and forgotten in their tunnels during his battle for the ward stone. The Hunters obviously did not know what they had in their possession. To them it was probably just another magical trinket, discovered on some mission and hidden away with the rest of the items they were afraid of, but too stupid to understand. He could simply go there now and take it, but to do so would certainly end in a direct confrontation against MHI. Not that he would mind that so much, but it was not conducive to achieving his current mission, and there was the possibility, however small, that they would be able to best him. Then nobody would stop Kurst, and that was unacceptable.