Page 29 of Trusted Instinct
Creed
Creed wanted some time to ask Gator about the ballistic vests he sent to the bed and breakfast for Auralia and Doli.
“Not his place to meddle” didn’t mean Creed didn’t want to. ’Cause he sure as hell did.
Not because he lacked respect, not because he questioned the women’s capabilities, just the thought of someone or something touching a hair on Auralia’s head in a way that might cause her harm meant Creed had to restrain the beast that wanted to roar, then to sprint forward, to drag and thrash and lay waste to anyone or anything that would come against her.
“See that Rougarou?” Creed looked down to catch Rou’s gaze. “If things were right in this world, you and I would change names, and I’d bear the name of the feared beast ’cause, honestly, that’s sometimes how I feel.”
These sensations were new to him, but they felt older than time, like they’d been handed down through his ancestors.
It was a man’s sense of protection that Creed was learning to manage now that he loved so deeply.
Thinking of Auralia today, a tremor rumbled down Creed’s bones until it crowded his toes in his boots. His ears filled with the sound of a hummingbird directly overhead—like a tongue trill that moved air from the lungs to the atmosphere.
It vibrated him. It made his gut clench.
What did Gator know? Why had he sent the ballistic vests? Why hadn’t he told Creed what was going on?
Then, of course, Creed realized the spot he’d put Gator in.
How could Gator have spoken up and warned Creed that Auralia was in danger? After all, they hadn’t said out loud that they were a couple.
That left Gator to do what he could, while honoring Creed and Auralia’s decision to keep their relationship a secret.
Gator was a good man, the best.
They’d been friends since their mammas found out they were pregnant at the same time. The Rochambeau family lived on the other side of a creek that ran clear and fast between their houses.
Crawdads liked to build their chimneys there in the soft mud. The boys could lie on their bellies talking about their dreams—both those they’d woken up remembering, and those they formed for their futures—as they slid their arms into the holes all the way up to their pits to grab at the crawdads and fill the baskets with protein for dinner.
One of the dreams the boys had shared was to join the military, just like their dads had done, and like their granddaddies before them.
As for Gator, he could trace his ancestry clear back to the Comte de Rochambeau, who fought alongside George Washington at Yorktown.
For Creed, his many-greats-grandfather went to Mexico under the orders of Napoleon III. Rather than head back to France, Hugo Duchamp took a job escorting a lady of French Creole descent, whose ancestry traced back to the Caribbean, as she returned home to her family's plantation in Louisiana. On the trip, they fell in love. Once she got her family’s approval, the two married and farmed a field of native pecan trees. Every generation of the Hugo Duchamp family line joined the military and lent their talents to what they believed was the greater good.
Creed’s dad had served as a Marine, sustaining disabling injuries bad enough that he retreated to the Bayou to live alongside family support. He married and settled.
That’s how Creed ended up living in a little hut on the shores where the great Mississippi reached for the Gulf. There, the smell of salt and damp wood filled his nostrils. He was steeped in the ancient magic that sank into the soil and swirled in the foggy nights.
Incantations were called by the tree frogs and echoed in the music.
Creed remembered one day they were playing Hansel and Gretel. But Gator and he played the roles of the witches who were also the heroes. The witches had been minding their own business, performing rituals and making salves, when Hansel and Gretel (Gator’s twin brothers) showed up, playing the role of bratty kids, disturbing their carefully laid spell. The twins started picking up all the goodies that Creed and Gator had gathered and ate them without asking permission, and without knowing their uses and powers.
Yeah, that was the way Gator’s mamma told the story, casting the witch as the righteous one and the children as naughty pillagers.
In Creed’s house, they saw priestesses and witches as wise women.
Creed’s own Mémère had taught Creed about the powers of plants even from the youngest age. She knew just what kind of poultices to put on his chest and just what kind of oil to rub into his back to make him feel better when he got sick.
In their game, Gator and Creed had grabbed up the naughty twins and sat them on a rock. Then the Duchamp and Rochambeau sisters created a circle of salt on the ground and placed rocks to form different shapes.
As the children played, an elder, stooped and leathery, walked along the shore, wearing men’s clothing that hung loosely on her tiny frame. She was collecting things in her basket. Seeing their game, she walked, looked down at what they’d done, and asked, “Who taught you this here?”
“We’re just playing,” Gator had said.
She’d looked him dead in the eye. “You can see, can’t you?”
