"You must be with Kintail," Michael said to Cameron as he worked on the dogs' harnesses.
Faith felt her blood pressure rise.
Cameron sliced him a glare. "Not in this lifetime."
Michael and the other two men stopped harnessing the dogs, and he glanced back at Charles's tent and swore under his breath, "Damn, Charles." He considered Cameron's torn parka sleeve. "When did it happen?"
"A couple of days ago."
Michael considered Faith. "Were you bitten also?"
"Not by one of Kintail's wolves." Faith avoided eye contact with Cameron.
Cameron threw their bags on one of the snowmobiles. "Yeah, she was... by mistake."
Michael shook his head. "Best if the two of you leave the region pronto, if you know what's good for you."
Cameron gave him a caustic look. "I'm still looking for two of my friends."
"We admire you and your kind." Michael bowed his head slightly in reverence. "Kintail and his people have been here for centuries—magical creatures, powerful and at one with nature. They have always lived in peace with our people, the tales passed on from generation to generation, while we have honored their ways. Which means we don't interfere in their… your business. What goes on with Kintail's pack, territorial disputes, internal encroachments or external ones, will be decided by you and your kind."
Faith closed her gaping mouth. Kintail was one of them. For centuries this had been going on? It had to have been what her father's research was all about!
What about what the men in the hot tub had said? They hadn't found Bigfoot, but something else? The man killed in Kintail's office… with silver. Hell, he was a… werewolf?
The fairy tales were true? But then again, silver in high amounts could kill anyone.
"We appreciate your helping us out, and we'll take it from here." Cameron took the gun from Faith and shoved it in his pocket.
The notion they were out on a twig of a limb without a safety net crossed Faith's mind. This was so not good. Wanting to thank Charles and say good-bye, she stalked into his tent, but his eyes were shut and when she crouched next to him and spoke, he didn't respond.
"Thank you, Charles, for everything." She kissed his cheek and pulled the blanket higher. "We appre ciate everything you did for us, and if I can ever pay you back… just contact me." She hoped he was really awake, or enough so that he could hear her. But she intended to check on him after they returned to Millinocket later.
When she reemerged from the tent, she asked Michael, "Will Charles be all right?"
"That hard head of his has taken a lot of knocks. Yeah, he'll be fine, but he shouldn't have gotten into Kintail's business. He knows better."
"I can't understand how you can treat Kintail as if he should get away with this," she said, waving toward Charles's tent, "as if you don't care." Faith's voice was much higher pitched than she meant it to be, but she couldn't believe Charles's family would allow such brutality to one of their own. Maybe they didn't care about Cameron's friends, but Charles was their cousin! "You act as though Kintail's a god!"
"I'm certain you'll come to understand Kintail's ways before long. All I can say is that we were not put here to judge him or his kind." Michael turned to George. "Get them to the resort and make sure they leave for the trailhead after that. We'll be headed that way shortly. And don't talk to anyone. We don't want any more trouble."
George barely let Faith and Cameron mount their snowmobiles before he took off. He drove so fast she wondered if it was because he didn't want Kintail or his people to catch him aiding them, he hoped to lose them, or he just wanted to get back as quickly as possible to help Charles.
She glanced at Cameron driving behind her. Was he getting the wolf change more under control? She hoped so or he'd have to live like a mountain man. Find a job where he could work out of his home. No dealing with people on a regular basis. Only private eye investiga tions under the cover of dark.
Then she worried about her own situation. What if she began to change? There went her job, too.
She didn't feel any urge in that regard, though. Thankfully. Through her balaclava, she smelled the air, crisp, clean, and cold. Nothing unusual about it. Maybe the only time someone like Cameron had the wolf sense was when he was a wolf. That would be understandable. At least as much as turning into a wolf could be believable.
But the whole time back, she worried about what they would report to the police. That a wolf attacked Cameron, changed him into something mythical? And maybe she was in the same boat, too? That he'd killed two wolves defending her who happened to be men also? That Kintail or one of his men had nearly killed Charles?
Officers Whitson and Adams would believe every bit of it. Right.
In half the time it took to travel with the dogs, they arrived on the snowmobiles back at the cabins. As soon as they dismounted at the lodge, Faith hoped to under stand more of what they were up against. She asked George before he could run off, "What do you know about Kintail's wolves?"
He cast a disgruntled look her way. "You're not one of the Cree and you're not an accepted member of Kintail's pack. If I were you, I'd do what my brother suggested. Get out of here before Kintail or his people make you vanish for good."
"But Cameron is one of them," Faith insisted.
George shook his head and took the keys to the snowmobiles from them. "Kintail hasn't made him part of his pack and none of his people will welcome him here while the leader wants him dead. My own people won't willingly take sides with an outsider who's one of Kintail's kind but on his terminal list. So Cameron will have to leave and…" He lifted a shoulder. "… maybe start his own pack. Since Cameron bit you…," George said, his lips lifting slightly, "for all practical purposes he's already claimed a mate."
Faith's mouth gaped, and she quickly looked at Cameron.
He cleared his throat and took her hand. "We don't know that you've been infected."
George looked like he didn't believe she'd escaped Cameron's fate. "Kintail's pack rules this territory. The best thing for the two of you to do is return to your own region. Although blending in someplace else might be hard to do when the shift occurs. No Arctic wolves in the States, except for Alaska. Unless you manage to win the populace over like Kintail and his people have here, pretending that the wolves are pets."
George's expression darkened. "The problem if you go to Alaska is it's the only place in the United States that animals can be shot from an aircraft through some loophole in the law. So, hunters will either kill from the air, or run the wolves or other hunted animals down until they're too exhausted to escape, land the aircraft, and shoot their prey. A magical wolf would then be just as much at risk of being hunted down while in its wolf form. Many hunters oppose aerial hunting because it violates the ethics of fair chase, but the ones who don't..." His jaw taut, George shook his head.
"You can leave the keys to the cabins on the kitchen counters." Then George went inside the lodge and shut the door.
"You might be all right, Faith," Cameron reiterated. "You might not have contracted my… condition."
But she wasn't just concerned about herself. "What will you do? And what about your friends?"
Cameron took Faith's uninjured hand, walked her past the shower facility, and headed for the path through the woods to her cabin. "I can't leave until I find them. It appears you don't need to stay here any longer though. Seems your father might have seen something of what I've become while he was doing his research. And I doubt that even if the flash drive still exists, Kintail will want your father sharing the information with the world. In fact, it's too dangerous for you here. Until I can get you on a plane out of here, you'll stay with me, but then you need to return home."
She frowned at him. "I agree that my dad probably found out about Kintail and his people and that's what he wrote about. Maybe someone was following him like he thought because of what he'd known." Faith pulled Cameron to a stop. "What if Hilson is dead? If he tried to blackmail Kintail with the information, he or his people most likely would have killed him. Maybe that's why he's no longer at the cabin. Or maybe he's one of them." She took a deep breath. "But even so, I can't go, not now."
"Listen, I've got to find my friends and free them from Kintail's clutches if they're still alive. Somehow. It's not going to be a walk in the park. But I can't be watching your back also. It's too dangerous."
She "humpfed" and headed off to the cabin. "For your information, Cameron MacPherson, I may already have your, uhm, problem, condition, whatever. So I'm not about to get on an airplane and fly home before I know for sure. What if I changed in the middle of the flight? No pets allowed, and certainly no feral wolves.
"I could see myself having an episode and having to hightail it to the bathroom. Then the seat belt lights go on, and I'm stuck in the privy as a wolf. The stew ardess is pounding on the door, trying to get a stubborn passenger to retake her seat. And I can't say a word. The stewardess uses a key on the door, afraid there's something terribly wrong. And there is. I've got big sharp teeth, an extraordinary sense of smell, and better vision—all the better to see, smell, and eat her with. So I'm staying here until I know the whole story."
He didn't say anything for quite a while, his hand still tight around her arm as he held her close, helping to keep her warm from the bitter breeze. Then he cleared his throat. "Okay, but you continue to stay with me for the time being. And," he turned to look at her and added, "if you don't show any signs of what I have, you go home, pronto."
She glowered at him. "It would be my pleasure." Although she didn't mean it in the least. Had to be a case of immediate rebound. Hell, she was ready to settle down with a wolf-man?
