The Creole King Idiot
Skul risked driving a luxury JLTV to the edge of the Southern territory then took a cramped, low-profile boat with a whisper motor to the coordinates on his GPS.
He was beginning to think all the Marsh people were gifted for the simple fact they could locate their own dwellings in such a tangled web of waterways.
He read the detailed medical report Patches sent him for the fourth time. He didn’t need to, he had to. The miniscule mental activity scratched his itches. Side effect—brain blisters.
He feared the Marsh King’s alchemist was correct regarding the bite symptoms becoming hostile if denied or ignored.
It made obsessing over the details of the daughter at the location he was headed to feel necessary.
The female daughter. That’s the term he’d used when inquiring about specifics because with the bite, it was all about females. And the only safe ones were children.
“You said there was a female daughter. Is this a child?”
“No, I’m afraid the daughter is a woman,” the good doctor said. “A female woman.”
Hilarious. Fucking Marsh Mongrel.
Fifteen minutes is all it would take for him to do the job and drag himself out of whatever fire he’d find himself in. The fires were never a wonder. They were a fact. Everywhere he went. He could only control how long he’d burn in them.
He’d have to be fast if he wanted to make it back before dark.
Of course he was too fucking busy deciphering people to remember to decipher a fucking clock.
It didn’t help that this family didn’t have phones.
There was a CB radio that was missing parts.
The daughter had a cell with a battery that didn’t hold a charge, leaving only the mother’s cell who spent most of her time helping prepare for the incoming flood of refugees.
Essentially, he was going to confirm that this father needed treatment. Why not have him picked up and brought in? As a medical requirement?
He allowed himself to consider the lone female daughter.
To care for another human suffering mental deterioration said something about her ethics at least. He wondered who’d had the sense to put tracking on his boat in case he got lost. He would surely die before being found in this sprawling water-wilderness.
He dialed the mother’s number when he made it to the coordinates with no house in sight.
“Hello?” she answered, curious.
“Miss. LaFleur, this is Skul, with the Creole Kings.”
“Oh! I didn’t recognize the number. How did it go, I hope Remi behaved.”
“Well, it didn’t go yet. I’m at the coordinates but don’t see a residence.”
“Ohhhh well… what do you see?”
“I only see…” he looked all around and spotted a flash of white. He gunned the little motor and it came into view. “My apologies, a few meters more and I would’ve seen it.”
“Oh, don’t fuss, I sometimes can’t find it myself and I’ve been there for forty years,” she laughed. “Hope on the other hand, can find it with her eyes closed. So could Remi, but as you know his memory isn’t what it used to be.”
“I’ll see what I can see and give Dr. Patches my report.”
“Alright,” she said softly, questions weighing in her tone. “Hope will fill you in on anything if seeing isn’t enough. She keeps a careful journal of all of it, bless her heart.”
Skul’s cock was now all ears.
“Now, don’t be put off by her, she don’t really have a lot of… social experience. She homeschooled herself because they were too slow for her. But she’s very bright,” she assured, as if he might think otherwise.
“I’m sure she is,” he said back.
“If she comes off rude, just know she don’t have a rude bone in her body, it’s just how she is, she’s quiet, she does a lot of thinking and reading, but she’s not a frivolous reader, she’ll tell you that.
Reading is work to her, not leisure. She takes her lavender tea every afternoon for her leisure and that’s when she thinks about everything she’s read.
I call her wonder woman,” she said, laughing. “And she calls it logic lusting.
Her laughter got drowned out by pounding in his ears and cock at that word combo. “I’ll be sure and call you as soon as I’m done, Mrs. LeFleur,” he said. “I’m pulling up now.”
“Thank you so much—”
He hung up while she finished her sentence but only because he needed to focus on parking a boat which was suddenly happening at a speed faster than seemed mathematically accurate.
He aimed for the spot next to the small, docked boat and proceeded to have one, hellacious logic-lusting miscalculation. Modern textile met ancient dock wood with a crunch he felt right in his pride. Seven seconds. Five for shock and awe and two for jumping before sinking with his shame and sins.
****
The awful sound set off Hope’s worst fears as she went flying out of her house, searching the dock for her Pah-Pah. She came to a stumbling halt at seeing a man standing on the pier, staring at a half-sunk boat.
She made her way closer, pulse roaring in her ears, trying to make out who it could be. She searched her mind for relatives that might visit, unable to think of any who would fit the giant man with long black hair and half-shaved head. And beard.
He suddenly turned when she made it to the pier and she stopped dead in her tracks.
“Hello. Uh… Who are you?” She had proper greetings memorized should anybody ever come over, but she never imagined a visitor like him and got it all wrong.
“I’m Skul,” he called with authority, his voice deep as he headed toward her. “I was sent by Dr. Patches to see about Mr. LaFleur. You must be Hope, his daughter. I just spoke with your mother, as I couldn’t find your residence.”
Hope had no other word for her condition but stupefied. And it only got worse, the closer he got. His eyes were so blue and fierce, they felt like an assault. He suddenly stopped dead in his tracks, and she realized she was moving in reverse with every step he took.
He raised both hands. “My apologies,” he said, his voice much softer. “I realize how disturbing this must be.”
She nodded at him, remembering words were necessary. “I thought… my Pah-Pah had managed to slip away. If I hadn’t panicked, I would’ve remembered I hid the keys from him.” She struggled to remember the social rules for such a situation. “I’m Hope,” she said, hurrying forward with her hand out.
She stopped just before him, and he stared at her gesture.
She jerked her hand back. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I thought this was a proper way to greet guests.”
He looked right at her then right off like the sight of her was all wrong.
Her heart dropped at remembering she’d flown out of the house with no thought. She quickly looked down at herself, seeing she was properly clothed. Oh thank God.
Minus her missing muck boots.
Her toes flared out, trying not to touch one another as her brain went to work on the dirt problem. “I can take you to look at my Pah-Pah,” she said.
He nodded, still not looking at her. “Thank you,” he said, his voice tight. “I will only need a few minutes.”
She nodded too. “I made notes of all his symptoms,” she said, shifting on her feet, feeling the dirt drying into her skin. “Maybe you can look at them after you look at him?”
He finally let his eyes on her. “What if I see your notes first, then your Pah-Pah?”
She nodded a lot. “I think that’s a good direction to take.” She glanced at her parent’s house then pointed at hers. “That’s my place.” She regarded him, squinting under the sun’s glare. “I’ll make you something encouraging to drink.”
****
Royally fucked.
He was now convinced it wasn’t just the bat bite at work in the fate of the Kings, it was the coins.
In this case, the LUST one. The term returning to bite you in the ass was beginning to feel too literal.
They’d operated for years under the wrong marriage logic and when given the correct one, they bucked against it.
Then they doubled down in their error by taking a bite from a sex-crazed, bat-bitten lunatic.
The catastrophic moron kings. That’s what they were.
His natural gift was understanding through observation.
The bite magnified that to a near forensic clarity.
But he required no gift to see that more was at work here than science.
He didn’t believe in coincidence and as he followed this tragically beautiful woman, alone, to her home, his forensic instincts screamed it.
His arrogance had spurned the wrong simple wisdom and now he’d learn it the hard way.
He got busy with emergency measures, starting with facing the data burning in his mind, confronting this woman who had taken spring hostage into the dead of winter, carried its sun on her skin and its flowers in her hair—literally.
And fuck, her eyes, her near glowing eyes.
Golden wheat after a cleansing storm. Capable of catastrophic power with a single look.
His brain hurried to the tiny perfection on her angelic face.
Her mouth. Without a doubt it had the potential to be her greatest weapon.
Or his, depending on what came out of it.
Don’t you dare fuck around. The odds are not in your favor with a self-taught woman who understands that knowledge is a discipline and every afternoon, over lavender tea, she has a lust affair with its logics.
She was an intellectual wet dream. Barefoot. Somehow that made her more threatening. The wispy skirt the color of pink rose petals and sleeveless white top over a chest that was unmistakably woman, was an exclamation mark dramatizing the facts.
And there he went, following her. Alone. Into her home. Boat smashed. Hope gone, regret gone.
She paused at a shallow tub of water on her porch and washed her dainty feet. His gaze devoured every second, inch, and angle of the strange act, while the fire in his mind moved over her ankle and up her calf.
“I have a disproportionate loathing for dirty feet and dirt on the floors,” she said, explaining the oddity with words that set fire to his sick gifts.
“You have no need to explain yourself to me, Miss. LaFleur.”