If you must understand Ethan Chandler's fate, know that it was set before he was born.

You have seen the ruffian he chooses to be. That is only one layer. One of those underneath corresponds to a young man from a very well-to-do family. His father is still alive, an important merchant and public figure in the railroad town of Wellington, Ohio.

Josiah and Francine Chandler had lost their first two children. The first only lived a few days. The second loss was much more painful. This little boy lived a healthy life up to age six. The parents watched him die during the last year of his life. He wasted away and there was nothing for the devout Lutheran family to do but pray.

At Josiah's urging, he and his wife took a vow, renouncing every earthly pleasure to devote themselves completely to the prayer that was their only hope to save their boy.

Then, about four months into their trials, when their son's body was wasted and he scarcely knew who they were, Josiah heard his wife crying in the kitchen late in the night. To her credit, she was trying to bear this tribulation bravely by muffling her sobs. The sin was his.

Her husband went to her and he comforted her. He knew the act to be a sin because their child never again responded to their speech or presence. The boy spent the next 8 months as an infant once more.

Josiah did not blame the woman that her womb greedily clutched his seed and decided to make something of it, though it was the wrong time to try and create life out of a blasphemy. The pregnancy fixed a selfish act in place forever. One accomplished in the pantry, of all places: worldly like the fruit it bore.

"How do you know all this, Vanessa?" Dr. Frankenstein demanded of the medium reclining in a light trance. "You can't have channeled the father, or whatever you call it. The man's still alive."

"Perhaps the man is dead yet still lives," Sembene spoke up.

"Vanessa has spent some time talking to various entities, Doctor," Sir Malcolm said with a heavy dose of good breeding. "She has gone to a lot of trouble to collect information that may be the only way to save a colleague and a friend from the noose."

If he was completely honest with himself, Victor found it more convenient that Ethan perish on the gallows. Alive, the American could some day find out about his lady friend Brona, reanimated and intended for a monster.

While Dr. Frankenstein was considering that no one was too quick to protest Ethan's innocence, Vanessa's tranquil voice continued.

All of this Ethan's mother told him on her deathbed, shortly after his 20th birthday. His mother had always been his refuge. Francine had a talent for happiness, and she must have been extraordinarily gifted in order to remain serene while married to the dour-faced deacon who imposed a series of ostensibly Biblical rules on the household. Many of these rules were imposed on Ethan at whip-point, while others involved being denied meals or forced to clean a stable to some impossible standard for being unable to correctly recite all the begats from the Book of Chronicles.

Sometimes he was locked in his father's storehouse to count every single button and nail, or made to pick grains of salt out of a dish of flour. He would always fail at these tasks, but worse than the beatings were these long hours imprisoned before the absurd.

His father must have known exactly how to bring misery upon his son. Ethan would look at the man out of the corner of his eye at dinner, sure he caught that petty, scheming genius hiding behind his father's bland face.

Francine Chandler's gift at happiness might have come down to her ability to ignore the things she found beneath her.

His father would say in a low, dangerous voice as the young man was getting ready to go out, "He's going out into temptation and he'll bring corruption back into this house."

And the mother would continue with her needlework unperturbed. "Don't stay out too late, my dear. And Ethan, bring that nice Millie by the house sometime."

Ethan would come to think that his father's misgivings about his only surviving son were not spiritual in the least. Both the sulking and explosive varieties of paternal anger were meant to prevent the two ebullient spirits near him, Francine and Ethan, from making the patriarch's small spirit have such a bad showing. For Josiah Chandler was feared but not liked by the townsfolk, but Francine was a beloved and sought-after guest in any house. The hosts completely ignored her spouse on the few occasions he was invited.

"You must forgive him as I have," Francine confided during her short but deadly struggle with cancer. "I thought that if only we could have a child we could find happiness together. My Ethan, your father hardened his heart against you before you were even born. As soon as I started showing he took you to be the thief that was stealing your brother's life. If it is anyone's sin, it is mine, and I have never for a day regretted bringing you into this world," his mother whispered.

The young man clutched her hand, unable to imagine life without this person who turned even the harshness of his life into joy.

"Go far from here," she continued. "I am content knowing that you have nothing to keep you in this town, my son. You have an adventurous soul, Ethan, and we both know you were born under a lucky star."

It was true. Everyone said so. Ethan had been born with some preternatural charm and since a very young age had been able to wield it to get whatever he liked from anyone—with the notable exception of his father. As a very young boy he'd lacked the imagination to really make use of this talent, other than to skip more quickly through the lessons that didn't interest him—mostly Bible study and math—so he could run around inspecting the animals, pulling pigtails and climbing trees. And all the other pursuits that his father called savage.

When Josiah Chandler realized the boy could manipulate any private tutor set before him, Ethan was sent to a private school for the very best boys destined for the elite professions. He excelled at sports and dancing, both of which were too showy for his dour father's taste.

The young boy could never understand why his charm didn't work on his father. Ethan hid in the school cloakroom once to listen to his father ordering the schoolmaster to punish him more harshly—use the stick, hold him back a grade, whatever it took to "bring him down a notch."

"But Mr. Chandler, the boy is a bit of a free spirit, that's all. I'll have him to work any day of the week washing chalkboards if you like," the teacher said, "But I can't in good conscience take up a switch against him for being a bit too cheerful, and honestly making the day go faster for everyone. His jests are nearly always on topic. I have to think he does some part of his lessons in order to make sport of them so well. His examinations prove it."

"You're just like the rest, under his spell," Ethan's father had muttered. "One day you'll all see what I see. It's unnatural for a young man to be so well liked, coddled and indulged. A man does not live only for pleasure. You're laying the path to hell for the boy, and he's too soft to be able to resist the devil when he comes for him, mark my words!"

Up until that moment, Ethan was accustomed to his father's daily traffic with hell. Some of the other young people from their church reported much the same—and far worse discipline, as he would no doubt have suffered without his mother to intervene.

But that day, Ethan peeped through the cloakroom door and saw his teacher sitting there frozen after his father's exit. It took watching another person's reaction to grasp that his father really believed his son was on the path to hell and wanted every possible trial visited upon Ethan to prevent it.

How could a father be so cruel? is what Ethan detected in the schoolmaster's especial kindness after that. But the student had learned something else from his eavesdropping. His father loved him in a way and was desperately trying to save this third boy from what threatened to take him away. In this case, his father was sure it was the devil. But conversely, the boy's idea of the devil began and ended with his father.

Young Mr. Chandler clung to the abundant affection from his mother and everyone else in the town after that. He completed his studies but chose to stay at home, near his lifelong friends. He had no shortage of jobs, and when he got bored and went on to the next, no one begrudged him. People seemed to shine brighter when Ethan was around them, and he liked being able to bring a little joy into the straight-laced town where the preachers all suffered for a lack of sinners, and the sermons usually focused on depravities going on in Cincinnati.

After his mother's death, Ethan packed up his things in obedience to her wishes that he seek broader horizons. He was delighted to explore the vast country and knew her spirit was happy for him.

The young man never worried because his good fortune followed him. He found a way to see the country and get paid for it—as a part of a private militia dedicated to hunting runaway Indians affiliated with the Pinkerton Agency. His new comrades immediately noted his lucky star.

"You know you can't never leave us, Chandler," one of their band of five said on one of their missions.

"I don't think of you like that, Mulroney, I've told you a hundred times," Ethan joked.

"I mean that ain't nobody been scalped since you joined up, and I don't mind having your leftovers from the ladies following you around."

"How do you do it, Chandler?" one of the other men pressed. "You pretty but I seen prettier, and I ain't never seen womenfolk scent a man from a mile away like they do with you."

Ethan laughed good-naturedly. He'd caught companions rubbing one of his shirts on their skin before going out for a night on the town. He'd even had his belongings searched many times for this good luck charm that had the ladies flocking to him no matter how tired and dirty he was from tracking Indians. And not just any reds, but some of the wiliest, most dangerous ones at that—the kind people wanted captured alive so they could charge admission to see a notorious Indian killer of white men, safely caged.

One or two of the band's captives had killed themselves, sensing a sideshow in their future.

It really was an interesting way of life, perfect for someone who needed to use all of his wits or found himself getting bored.

The Indians obliged. The greatest danger lay not in the ones they tracked to cash in on a bounty for murder, but from their kinsfolk. The five men had suffered several raiding parties led by Indians trying to steal back one of their prisoners. Every once in a while the captives made such pests of themselves that the group decided to release the prisoner in question. They were mercenaries after all, with no moral vision to defend other than their own survival. And they were skilled at it. This band of five had grown close over three years of tracking together.

Then, over a period of days, the group lost their usual happy go lucky attitude. For nearly a week they'd woken up to find arrows embedded in the trees near their camp. During the day there was a sense that they weren't alone, though no natives were sighted. Their horses were skittish as the five rode on the trail of a Choctaw who'd gone on a killing spree clear into California.

"Where's that good luck of yours, Chandler?" Mulroney had asked in a tense voice, their nerves all on edge for the next random arrow. "I'm a great one for tracking, but I don't like the tables turning on me one bit."

"It doesn't make any sense, is what I don't like," said Stevens, their expert on Indian tribes. "The arrows we've picked up have been all kinds of styles and markings. Either these are some smart redskins pretending to be from a bunch of different tribes¬—"

"To rescue a Choctaw we haven't even caught yet," another man put in.

"Or they're tracking us for some other reason," Stevens finished.

"I think my lucky star is still burning just fine, thank you. Nobody got carried off while we were asleep last night, did they?" Ethan joked. He was always able to defuse his comrades' nervousness, but part of him was a little concerned by the idea that his good luck might be deserting him. He'd always thought it was the protection offered by his mother's love, but he couldn't deny that he sensed someone watching at all times.

All jokes aside, they did live with no small amount of danger, and when you're far out in the wilderness you learn awful fast that mother nature didn't care who you were. It had been a sobering experience when he first worked out that no amount of charm would fill your belly or protect you from frostbite. His father might have been right about his son being somewhat spoiled, but if he'd seen some of their scrapes with death even Josiah Chandler would have been forced to recognize that Ethan knew how to rise to a challenge.

His first months on the job, the city boy strove to be an asset and not a liability to his mates. That meant mastering the guns and knives that were the tools of his new trade. Ethan had a basic-level familiarity from the household servants who gave him lessons on the sly. His companions marveled at his natural marksmanship, but Ethan knew it was about the only thing in his life he'd worked for, even if it did come easier than for most.

Then came that night in the Mesquite Mountains of California. Ethan was the one on first watch. Beyond the altitude, it was late October: the air was cold and he was watching a light coating of snow come down. The lookout post had been constructed of a screen made of twigs and leaves and set, as was their custom, where the watcher could see the most likely intrusion point as well as keep an eye on his mates.

This night's sentry had his head raised from behind the screen. Maybe the sky could tell him how big the storm was going to be. Then the clouds cleared for a moment and Ethan froze at the sudden light illuminating him.

The arrow hit his neck with a glancing blow from behind, evidently from a scout who had gotten close and then waited for just such an opportunity to take a clear shot.

If they were that close, why did they miss? Ethan was asking himself as he crumpled to the ground. Only as the paralytic spread through his bloodstream did he consider that the Indians wanted there to be a white witness as they took the rest of the camp. His limbs went numb. He fought through enough of the panic to realize something was even more dreadfully wrong than a standard raid.

For there wasn't a red man in sight. His friends' voices joined in a shrieking chorus. From where he'd fallen, Ethan, unable to look away or even blink, watched two of his friends get dragged out of their tents and slaughtered.

These moving shadows were wild animals, but why would so many have been drawn to their camp? Ethan had learned that you don't begrudge a wild thing its way of life. Steer clear of the grizzly and her young, and she might return the favor. Wait for a storm to have its way instead of daring it to shoot you in the ass with a bolt of lightning.

The paralyzed man racked his brains for knowledge about wild animals he wouldn't be able to act on anyway. Some of what they knew about avoiding being a critter's meal they'd learned from the Indians. Their prisoners also had no desire for a panther to eat the camp while it slept, and the band learned to see tracks and dung and then set traps based upon the likely predators for the terrain. But no one had seen signs of wolves being close by.

Ethan was watching his friends being ripped to pieces by the snarling beasts, and his drugged brain concocted a mad, hopeful story. He decided that the Indian who had shot at him must have been aiming for one of the wolves. He couldn't decide why that arrow had been dipped with a drug, but he clung to the idea that this Indian had survived the attack and felt enough loyalty to his species to rescue Ethan.

His comrades had already stopped screaming.

The paralyzed man still had a few silent screams left in him as he watched the savage creatures playing with the pieces of his friends. He saw a head and partial torso being tossed around by gleeful jaws not too far away.

When most of the feral barking was through, Ethan prayed they'd somehow not noticed him. But of course no animal could fail to note the wet scent of a human's fright. One by one, the glowing-eyed beasts came within a couple yards of him and stopped, sitting in a ring with their heads on their paws. Waiting. Because he couldn't blink the man's eyes had been streaming for some time. But he was also weeping out of impotent terror.

Ethan was ashamed to have an audience to his sniveling, even if they were a bunch of animals. They sat there staring at him and he thought he would go mad with suspense. He thought of his mother.

Then there was one wolf slowly padding towards him, and Ethan was gargling his frozen throat to tell them to make it quick. Death was better than one more moment as a prisoner in his own flesh.

The wolf came up to him and softly tugged one of his arms out front. It looked at the pack, as if wishing every beast to see what he was doing. The human's heart was beating out of his chest while he mentally said his first goodbye to a body part. The wolf bared his teeth.

The fang slashed across his forearm. The wolf stood there panting as if it were a house pet waiting to be patted on the head for its handiwork. Then the animal lapped at the blood welling from the wound, but instead of beginning its feast, the creature merely smeared it around on Ethan and on its own muzzle. The beast licked over the human's face, and the man was forced to endure the taste and smell of his friends' bodies being spread across his mouth and nose.

He began to feel warm, unbearably warm with the snow falling all around. Sweat sprang out of his skin and Ethan choked on a syllable. The head wolf licked his forehead.

The creatures began their infernal baying, and he lost consciousness.