Chapter 5
I made it back to the estate before the morning bustle started. Praise great Cthulhu and my new speed.
Standing in the middle of the bedroom and pulling on fresh, heavily starched trousers, I recalled the icy water with real pleasure.
Deep in the woods, far from prying eyes and accidental witnesses, I found a stream. The water wasn't just brisking, it was liquid nitrogen, straight up. An ordinary person, if he dared to dip even a finger in, would be tapping out SOS in Morse with his teeth a minute later, and the next day he'd be down with pneumonia. Me… I was loving it.
"O-o-oh, yes…" I moaned aloud as I plunged into the freezing current headfirst.
The cold burned, but for my body it was a blessing. It didn't freeze me, it cooled me. It washed away grime, sweat, dried чужая blood, and animal fatigue, making my skin sting and my muscles hum with tension like drawn strings. It felt like an elite spa procedure for a yeti. Cryotherapy at home.
Lying on the stony bed and watching the fading stars through the ripples of crystal-clear water, I even regretted that this wasn't after a proper steam bath.
Now this is the thing, I thought, blowing bubbles. I should set it up. Build a log bathhouse, haul stones for a stove. Bring a bit of civilization and hygiene to this patriarchal backwater of unwashed barbarians. Some of the locals don't wash for weeks.
When I climbed out onto the bank, I shook myself like a dog, sharply, with my whole body, thank God no one saw that disgrace, and, flashing my bare pale backside in the moonlight, I sprinted toward the house.
Halfway up, I started feeling a little embarrassed.
Picture it: the future terror of the criminal world, Wolverine, the hope of mutant evolution, climbing into a third-floor window bare-assed like some unlucky lover escaping a husband.
"Othello on a budget," I snorted, hooking my fingers over the ledge and hauling myself up on my arms alone. A pure solo performance. Romeo who forgot his pants at Juliet's and now is showing off his rear to all of Alberta.
With a chuckle, I pulled on a fresh shirt, put on the most innocent and respectable expression I could manage, and headed downstairs.
---
The dining room felt like a crypt. Even the air seemed stale and cold.
At the head of the long table covered with a snow-white, crisp tablecloth, Elizabeth was already seated. As always: perfectly straight back, strict black dress, the mourning veil thrown back, revealing a pale face.
Her face… That face was starting to get to me, honestly. The permanent expression of a fish. Grief mixed with total, absolute indifference to everything living. I looked at her and, sincerely, as a doctor, couldn't understand: was there any spark of rational thought behind that beautiful porcelain facade? Or was it nothing but laudanum sloshing around and an echo wandering in an empty skull?
I hoped that at least after giving birth she'd come back to life. Hormones are powerful, oxytocin should hit her brain and reboot the maternal instinct.
I sighed to myself.
The problem was that even though she treated James like a piece of furniture, I felt a strange, aching stir in my chest. The boy, that same little James whose memory and personality fused with mine, loved her. Unconditionally. And now that irrational, puppy-like love poisoned my adult cynicism, making me pity this icy statue.
I walked up to the table and sat down opposite her, at the far end of this runway.
"Good morning, Mother," my voice rang too cheerfully in the hush, bouncing off the high ceilings. "How did you sleep? How are you feeling today?"
I tried to crank the dial of courteous, loving son all the way up.
Elizabeth slowly, like a rusty mechanism long without oil, turned her head toward me. Her empty eyes slid over me, paused for a second, focusing… and she gave the faintest nod.
Wow. Progress. A nod was practically a full conversation by her current standards. Before, it was total silence, as if I were nothing, a hallucination.
Around the table, the maids moved like silent shadows, skittish Jeannette and the other one whose name I kept forgetting. They laid out silverware, set down plates with omelets and bacon.
And presiding over this gloomy parade was Rose.
She stood off to the side by the massive oak sideboard, and I didn't notice her at first. Her red hair was strictly tucked under a white cap, her face pale, eyes red and puffy, apparently she'd been crying into her pillow at night. But the moment she caught my glance, she gave a weak, timid smile with just the corners of her mouth.
And something stabbed me. A sharp sense that what was happening was wrong.
The three of us, me, Mother, and Red, were the only ones in this house who knew the truth about that bloody night. We weren't bound by service anymore, we were bound by blood and a shared страшная secret. And there she stood like furniture, waiting for orders, while we played aristocrats and ate omelets.
I set my fork down decisively. The clink of heavy silver against thin china cut through the silence like a shot.
"Listen, Mom," I began, deliberately breaking etiquette and speaking to her plainly. "What if Rose sits with us?"
Elizabeth froze with her porcelain coffee cup at her lips. The maids froze too, turning into pillars of salt. Rose went even paler, drawing her head into her shoulders.
"It's just the two of us left at this enormous table anyway," I continued, looking straight into Mother's eyes and not letting her look away. "And she's not just a servant to us anymore. She's like family. Rose went through hell with us. She was there. She saved us no less than I did."
I paused, pressing my gaze into her.
"I think it's right. To hell with conventions and etiquette. We're alone here, and we have no one to perform for."
Elizabeth slowly, very slowly, set her cup down on the saucer. Clink.
She shifted her fish-like stare to Rose. Carefully, appraisingly, she looked the girl up and down as if seeing her for the first time in years. The silence started ringing.
Red stood rigid, pressed against the sideboard, and seemed to stop breathing from fear. The air crackled with tension. I'd already braced myself, ready for a scandal, a lecture about subordination, about servants knowing their place, about declining morals…
But Mother suddenly blinked. Slowly. Something conscious flickered in her eyes. Fatigue? Understanding? Or maybe loneliness that outweighed class prejudice?
"Sit, girl," she said quietly but clearly, in her familiar commanding tone. "James is right. You… earned it."
I nearly choked on my omelet. A piece of bacon lodged in my throat.
Holy hell, flashed through my mind as I tried to keep my face calm. Is something really changing in this fairy kingdom? Or did pregnancy and stress finally knock Mother's brains back into place?
I'd asked on a whim, just to clear my conscience toward the girl. And look at that. The gambit worked.
Red stood half-dead, still a pillar of salt. Her panicked gaze darted from me to the mistress, afraid to believe her own ears. In her world, where social hierarchy was as unshakable as granite, my suggestion sounded like blasphemy.
"Go on," I nodded toward the high-backed chair beside me, on my right. "Don't make the lady repeat her invitation. Sit."
On legs that felt like cotton, stiff and unbending, she approached the table and carefully sat down on the very edge of the seat, as if expecting the chair to explode beneath her. Close to me. My sense of smell immediately caught her scent, the sharp tang of fresh fear mixed with cheap lavender soap.
Jeannette, with her peasant quickness, realized the wind in the house had changed and darted to the sideboard. She grabbed silverware and began setting Rose's place with such speed as if her life, or the salvation of her immortal soul, depended on it.
"Thank you, ma'am," the girl whispered, staring at her empty plate with the gold rim.
"Eat," Elizabeth said curtly, like an order, and returned to contemplating the darkness in her coffee.
I snorted to myself as I generously buttered a crisp slice of toast.
There it is, I thought, sinking my teeth into the bread. A tiny social revolution over morning coffee. The Bastille fell without a single shot. A start. Today we seat a maid at the master's table, breaking foundations, and tomorrow, who knows, we'll start taking over the world.
My appetite was savage. The omelet vanished in two bites, as if dropped into a black hole.
"Jeannette," I called without slowing down. "More bacon. And eggs. Bring the whole pan here."
Mother didn't even lift an eyebrow. Seems she'd accepted that her sickly son was turning into a bottomless glutton. Rose, watching me methodically destroy the kitchen's reserves, gave the faintest smile at the corner of her lips. A spark of warmth flickered in her eyes.
My jaws worked with the steady power of a steam hammer, grinding down a third portion of bacon. Poor Bambi, which I'd had last night as tartare, had already burned away without a trace in the nuclear furnace of my организм. A body rebuilding every cell demanded new fuel.
While my mouth did the mechanical work, my brain, finally getting a heavy dose of glucose, kicked into full power.
My thoughts returned to the letter I'd opened last night. Alfred Crane's reply. My golden boy hadn't disappointed. The bet on ambition paid off.
I replayed the lines of his message in my head, analyzing every word.
He didn't just send a polite response. The bastard used his head. He began, of course, with the standard condolences, irreparable loss, bright memory, all by the book of good manners. But then the tone shifted sharply, becoming dry and businesslike. Alfred confirmed he was ready to work not for some abstract Mister Howlett, but for the family through me.
More than that, he read between the lines of my veiled cry for help and understood the main point: the empire is in danger, the heir is under siege, there's no staff, enemies everywhere.
So he made a knight's move worthy of an experienced player.
"Mister Howlett, the scope of the tasks you described is too large for me alone. I took the liberty of contacting three of my classmates, the best Wharton graduates this year. They are reliable, competent, hungry for real work, and, critically, have no ties to your competitors in Canada. I invited them onto the team under my personal responsibility. We will discuss pay upon arrival, but I assure you, the results will justify the cost."
Smart. He understood that one man in the field isn't a warrior and decided to bring his own guard at once. A corporate pack. I liked that. Wolf logic in the world of finance.
And the final note that convinced me completely I'd chosen right: he asked for a tactical pause.
"Please forgive my audacity, but I will remain in Vancouver for some time. There are various, very alarming rumors about the state of your assets at the port and the stock exchange quotations. I want to arrive not empty-handed, but with a thick dossier on your partners and a list of potential financial diversions. I fear I won't cope alone if I dive into this whirlpool without разведданные."
When I read that, I only gave a satisfied snort. A strategist. Right, haste makes people laugh. An extra month won't matter, but information will. Better he prepares the ground than shows up wide-eyed while local sharks start biting chunks of meat off us.
I'd already sent him my reply with the morning courier. I approved the initiative, enclosed another fifty dollars for operational expenses, let him bribe clerks at the port, buy informants drinks in dockside pubs, whiskey loosens tongues, and asked a question meant to sting:
"Is there a telephone nearby, at the boarding house where you live? If so, send the number. Telegraph is slow and unreliable, too many eyes. I need a direct voice connection."
A telephone in 1892 was rare and expensive, but in big cities like Vancouver they were already far more common. If he could get access, it would give me a colossal advantage over clumsy rural barons still writing with quill pens.
I tore off a huge bite of toast, washing it down with strong, scalding coffee.
Brains were handled. The financial rear was covered. But muscles…
As they say, the horse hasn't even been near it. Total failure.
I urgently, critically needed fighters. Guards. A силовое wing. I couldn't pull it alone. Yes, I had claws, regeneration, and an animal sense. Yes, I could carve up ten men and make it a кровавая slaughterhouse. But I couldn't split myself. I couldn't turn into twenty little vicious Wolverines to solve every dispute at once.
I tore my father's office apart. John Howlett had people. I'd seen the ledgers. The old guard, inherited even from Grandfather Abraham. Heads of security, couriers, some shady types on the payroll who dealt with poachers and collected debts. A whole little private army.
So where were they?
Not a single visit in a week. No one came, no one bowed, no one confirmed loyalty to the new lord.
Only fat cat companions and top managers like Piggot came sniffing around.
I'd bet my paw they'd already divided everything. The whole силовое block of the family had been bought out. The vultures simply took the security under themselves, poached the men, explained to them that the widow was weak, the boy was small and stupid, now we are the power here and we pay your wages. And a hired man serves the one with the heavier purse. The dog wags its tail at the one holding the sausage.
Before, my father constantly received mail with reports, he often went out on business. And now, dead calm.
An information vacuum.
And that bothered me more than direct threats. Silence on the air means one thing: they isolated us. We were blind and deaf in our own house.
"Jeannette," I grunted, still polishing my plate with a piece of bread. "More coffee."
While the maid poured the black, steaming drink with trembling hands, trying not to spill it on the tablecloth, I drummed my fingers on the table. Tap-tap-tap. The rhythm of thought.
All right, back to our sheep. Or rather, our mercenaries. Where do I get them?
I needed people loyal to me personally. Not to the Howlett name, not to my late father's memory, not to money, but to me. James. The Beast. I needed outcasts. A wolf pack with nowhere to go except after its leader.
And again I thought about a dirty trick. The idea was insane, almost suicidal for an ordinary man, but perfectly workable for a cynical isekai bastard with nothing to lose.
That morning article wouldn't leave my head.
The Gallant Ghosts.
"Dumb name the scribbler came up with," I muttered, crookedly grinning into my cup. "Journalists always love cheap pathos and gothics. They should write novels, not news."
Yes, formally they were bandits. Raiders. Criminals headed for the gallows. But hand on heart, which of us is a saint? I'd recently fired a shotgun into a man's corpse to hide evidence, and last night I ate a deer raw, purring with pleasure. People are monsters. Some less, some more. Only a few are truly sinless, and those are usually already in the ground under white crosses.
But those guys… I felt them as kindred spirits. By their actions, they were pros. Top tier. Preparation, hard discipline, planning, and, most importantly, no extra blood. Clean work.
And that episode with the old man… stopping in the middle of a robbery to give smelling salts to a случайный witness having a heart attack? That isn't what rabid thugs do. That's a sign. They had a code. Their own sense of honor. And with people of a code, even on the other side of the law, you can negotiate. They're predictable in their principles.
The simplest part remained: find them. A needle in a haystack the size of Canada.
And that's where the snag was. I was waiting for them to pull another job so I'd get a starting point, a fresh hot trail. But they'd gone quiet. Silence on the air. Laid low, digesting their добыча. Smart devils. Not greedy.
"Why does everything have to be so damn hard," I sighed, looking out the window.
Of course, there was a backup, legal option. Hire some local Pinkertons. Private detectives, mercenaries, security agencies. But I knew that crowd too well, my world's history was full of examples.
For sale.
No loyalty, only a price list. Whoever pays more is right. Today they guard me, swagger, eat my bread. Tomorrow that fat boar Piggot tosses them an extra hundred dollars or promises them a share of the business, and those same protectors will smother me with a pillow in my sleep, writing it off as a sudden heart failure in a sickly boy. Unacceptable risk.
I could also look for бывшие soldiers. Veterans of colonial wars, retired officers. Sounds noble. But it's a minefield too: PTSD, скрытый alcoholism, phantom pains, and hard wiring of loyalty to the Crown. They're служаки. They need orders and a charter, and I'm going to play without rules. And where do I find them in this taiga backwater?
No. I needed wolves, not guard dogs on a chain. I needed the kind who bite throats for their own.
I downed my coffee in one go, feeling the bitter sludge burn my throat as caffeine hit my nerves and accelerated my brain.
I'd have to play Sherlock Holmes. If the mountain won't come to Muhammad, Muhammad will set an ambush for the mountain.
I needed to predict their next target. I had to get into their heads. Understand how they think, what they fear, what they'll bite on. I had to become the hunter who hunts hunters.
I bared my teeth without meaning to. My lips stretched, exposing a row of too white, too sharp teeth in a predatory grin of anticipation.
Rose, accidentally catching my expression, flinched with her whole body, dropped her fork, and hurriedly buried her face in her plate, trying to become invisible.
---
"Sir!"
The office door didn't just open, it exploded inward, slamming the wall with a crack like a cannon shot. To my heightened hearing it sounded like a grenade. I grimaced as the ring bounced off my teeth.
Rose burst in like a hurricane. Cheeks flushed, white cap slid askew, making her look like a mad cook from Alice in Wonderland. Her chest heaved beneath the starched apron, she'd run up the stairs, skipping steps. In her hands she clutched a crumpled газетный sheet as if it were a treasure map.
"Look, quickly. You asked me before, remember? About those bandits." she blurted, breathless with excitement. "Here. Fresh issue."
She shoved the Edmonton Bulletin under my nose. The paper still smelled of sharp chemical printing ink. That scent hit my nostrils, overriding the old-wood smell of the office.
I raised an eyebrow, but inside the predator was already lifting its head.
"Easy, Rose, easy. Your heart will jump out," I said evenly, calming, getting up from the desk and taking the paper from her. "This isn't like you. Usually you creep like a mouse, and here you're like an elephant in a china shop."
But inside I was pleased. More than that, I was triumphant.
A couple of days earlier I'd given her a secret task: be my eyes and ears in the estate and the округа. Track any rumors, any gossip, and if any information about the Gallant Ghosts surfaced, report it to me at once. She took it seriously, but until today the air had been dead. The bandits had gone to ground. I'd even started thinking they'd crossed into the United States.
"All right, let's see what we've got," I muttered, smoothing the crumpled sheet on the tabletop.
The headline screamed in fat, dancing letters meant to scare ordinary folk into hiccups:
FIRST BLOOD OF THE GHOSTS. A SLAUGHTER ON EDMONTON'S STREETS.
I grimaced.
"Slaughter." What a cheap, pompous word. Highway romantics, damn it. In these times they'll turn any horse thief into Robin Hood as long as they can sell the paper for more.
But sarcasm was just a mask. My pulse picked up.
When you talk about the devil, he limps in.
This wasn't somewhere far away in Vancouver or Toronto. It was right under my nose. In Edmonton. A little over twenty kilometers from here. An hour of running for me now.
I read on. The article was written in the best traditions of yellow press, lots of exclamation marks, epithets like devilish and monstrous, but I stripped the fluff quickly and took the core.
"Yesterday at noon the brazen gang known among the people as the Gallant Ghosts attempted to raid the Edmonton Savings Bank. However, fortune, which until now had favored the злодеев, turned away from them.
Apparently, the management, frightened by the previous robberies, secretly reinforced the guard with armed men. The moment the raiders burst into the hall, they were met with a hail of gunfire. A fierce firefight erupted, and a mounted police patrol arrived at the sound.
Fortunately, there were no fatalities among the servants of the law. However, two were injured: a bank guard received a light wound to the arm, and Constable O'Malley suffered a severe wound to the abdomen. The officer's condition causes serious concern among doctors.
But most importantly, the Ghosts have spilled blood for the first time. Witnesses claim that one of the raiders, a large man, was wounded by return fire during the retreat. His comrades, showing devilish coordination and risking their freedom, did not abandon him. They picked up the wounded man and, using the chaos, vanished into the maze of dockside alleys.
Neither police nor volunteers could find their trail. They disappeared without taking a single cent. How they managed to dissolve from a sealed district while carrying a bleeding accomplice remains a mystery the chief of police calls mysticism, and ordinary townsfolk call witchcraft.
Attention. The Government of Canada announces a reward of three hundred dollars for any information on the whereabouts of the criminals. The authorities intend to put an end to this lawlessness."
I finished the last sentence and slowly, deliberately placed the newspaper on the desk.
The picture was perfect. A gift of fate wrapped in pretty paper.
I folded my arms on the desk, rested my chin on them, and stared at the wall without seeing it. Gears were already turning in my head, assembling a plan.
"Interesting," I whispered. "Very interesting."
What do we have, in the dry остаток, if we throw out the journalist's poetry?
First: the operation failed. No money. Which means resources are limited, bribing someone to hide will be hard. Second: they're nearby. You can't make a forced march with a wounded man. They're holed up somewhere in the woods or in the slums on Edmonton's edge. Third, and most important: they're carrying a heavy load. A large man, wounded during retreat. Most likely a bullet to the body or a limb. Blood loss, shock, risk of sepsis.
They need a doctor. And they can't go to the city hospital or a private physician, because there they'll be waiting with handcuffs and a rope. Any аптекарь has been warned about the three hundred dollar reward. Turning them in is a fortune.
That opens gorgeous options.
"A wounded beast is dangerous, but predictable," I smirked, feeling the hunter's excitement. "It won't run far. It will look for a den to lick its wounds. And it's desperate."
I had to decide. Strike while the iron is hot. If I miss this moment, the outcomes are few: either the wounded man dies and the gang gets enraged or falls apart, or they abandon him, unlikely given their code, or the cops catch them.
I didn't need any of that. I needed them alive and indebted to me for the rest of their lives. Literally.
I looked up at Rose. She stood shifting from foot to foot, nervously tugging at the edge of her apron. My predatory, thoughtful grin was clearly making her uneasy.
"Red," my voice softened, turning coaxing. "I need your help."
She blinked, confused. "With what, James? Another trip to town?"
"No. The papers have done their part. Now the real game begins."
I stood and stepped close, invading her space.
"Do you trust me?" I asked, looking straight into her eyes, locking my gaze on hers.
"Why ask that, sir?" she was genuinely surprised, but she didn't look away. "You saved my life when Dog was dragging me. You're the only one who treats me like a human being. I don't doubt you. Never."
"Good," I nodded, accepting her loyalty. "Because now I'm going to ask you to do something wrong. By Elizabeth's rules and morality."
I put my hands on her fragile shoulders.
"I need to disappear. For a day, maybe two. No one must know I'm not in the estate. Especially Mother and those new hen-maids. If they find out a twelve-year-old lord ran off into the woods, they'll panic, call the police, and my whole plan will go straight to hell."
Rose went pale, her lips trembled. "But… how? She'll ask at dinner…"
"You'll say I have a brutal migraine. Or my stomach is acting up, ate something bad. Say I locked myself in my room, drew the curtains, don't want to see anyone, and I'm sleeping. No lights, no noise. Bring food to the door, make a show of leaving the tray, then eat it yourself or throw it away. Put on a performance, Rose. You're a smart girl, you can do it."
"You… you're going to look for them?" she guessed, nodding at the newspaper. Horror broke through in her voice. "Those killers? James, they shot a police officer. They'll kill you."
"They're not killers, Rose. Not yet. They're hunted wolves," I corrected her sharply. "And I need them. This is my only chance to keep all of us safe. If I bring them here, if I can tame them, we'll have our own strength. Then no Piggot, no Dog will come within a mile of us."
She stared at me with a mix of fear and strange admiration. A twelve-year-old boy in a velvet waistcoat talking like an adult. She didn't see a child in me. She saw the one who saved her in the parlor.
"I don't doubt you'll cover for me," I gave her a sly, almost boyish grin to ease the tension. "Right? We're a gang, aren't we?"
She took a deep breath, like before jumping into icy water. Her shoulders squared.
"Yes, James. Go. I'll do everything. I'll lie down as bones at your door, but no one will go in."
"Good girl," I quickly, impulsively kissed her cheek, and she instantly flushed crimson. "Now shoo. I need to get ready."