No. He would be . . . diplomatic. Franks intended to ask for the item. It was an unusual strategy. He took a different country road. There was one particular Hunter who owed him a favor. Franks would call in the favor. This particular Hunter had a certain sense of honor. He would probably cooperate. If he didn’t, then things would get interesting.

His destination was an old plantation mansion. It was well hidden in the trees, but Franks had been here before. He parked in the open and got out. Trying to sneak up would only make the Hunters twitchy. The house had been fixed up. They had done an extensive renovation since the last time he’d been here, which was understandable since that night the Hunters had been using rocket propelled grenades and flamethrowers against a vampire inside.

The lights were on. Someone was home. Good. If they had not been, then he would have had to go to their headquarters where he’d be dealing with an unknown number of extremely jumpy Monster Hunters. This was better.

Though he was not wearing a proper suit, Franks had used some baby wipes to clean the dried blood from his face in order to be presentable. He’d thrown the dried-out skin mask out the window somewhere outside Montgomery for the wildlife to eat. He went right up the porch to the front door and rang the doorbell. Then he knocked too, and Franks was incapable of knocking softly, so it was more of a pounding. The solid feel told him that the door and frame were armored.

The Hunters inside must have had a hidden camera on the porch, because when they saw who it was there was a loud buzzing noise. Latches released, and heavy metal shields clattered down to seal off every window of the mansion. Now that was a home improvement that Franks could appreciate.

There was an intercom next to the door.

“Franks?” The voice belonged to Owen Zastava Pitt. “Is that you?”

“I like your shutters.”

“Yeah. They’re new. We’ve been tricking the place out. And before you try to kick them in, Julie’s at a firing port watching you with an M-14 right now. So what the hell are you doing here?”

“Requesting sanctuary.”

There was a really long pause. “No kidding?”

He knew that MHI had done it before. Occasionally a supernatural creature ended up on the PUFF table that MHI didn’t think deserved to be on there, and they would ignore, or sometimes even hide the things. “You did it for that wendigo and his big dumb monkeys.”

“What’s hiding one more big dumb monkey from the government? Oh, that’s right. You are the government.”

“Not currently.”

Pitt sounded rather exasperated. “Dude, Franks, they’re offering a lot of PUFF for you right now. You really shouldn’t be here.”

“This is only temporary. MHI has a St. Hubert’s Key stored in your catacombs.”