Page 30 of Scarred Resolve

“It is humorous to see,” Davor said, chuckling lightly as he put his phone down as well.

He wasn’t wrong. I looked down at my phone again, seeing some of the replies as the family that wasn’t here joked about how I had done that. Zuri was saying she didn’t know a spell that could reach across the planet to deliver the message to Carey for me, while Jabari said he would ask Subira if she could manageit. Makalo asked if Carey could be added to this particular family chat, which got a maybe from Aisha, who also reminded him that Carey would be able to see the teasing things Jabari liked to share with the family. That got Makalo to backtrack quickly. Davor’s reply was he had the chat records and was now in the correct house to share them with her father if Makalo really wanted to blend the families together by bringing her father and brother in as well. That made every adult in the chat laugh, while Makalo used all caps to scream no and beg his uncle to spare him.

It was astoundingly normal and funny to a group of people who saw and did immense and incredible things.

Knowing I’d left a lot of the family in a fit of giggles, I flipped my phone over entirely to try to ignore anything else. Heath could follow our family chat with his own phone if Landon had a problem with letting his sister hang out. He wouldn’t have a problem because Landon would raze the earth to nothing for her and never missed a chance to help with her homework.

“Back on topic,” Heath said, sighing happily as he stopped reading Niko’s phone with him. “Amazing.”

“I don’t have their chat logs on me,” Davor said, sounding a bit sorry.

“I would never ask you to give those to me,” Heath said, smiling as he shook his head. “I trust that we’re all adults and know what might need to be told to parents if something is mentioned in a chat. Beyond obvious safety concerns, I won’t invade my daughter’s privacy out of a need to know every little thing about her life.”

“He wants to,” I said, smiling at him knowingly as he tried to play off his urges. “Heath wants to know everything his daughter is doing at every minute of the day. He wants to know who she’s talking to, what she’s saying, and what’s being said to her. He wants to know if a boy has even attempted to flirt with her or ifshe’s flirting with a boy. Or a girl.” I continued to smile as Heath tried not to react, knowing I was right about everything. “But he loves her, and he wants to be a good father that protects her while also letting her grow in the few safe places we can provide her in our world. She deserves to be a normal teenage girl with a few secrets of her own.”

“I understand that constant battle all too well,” Niko muttered, and I saw the tired father side of him peeking through.

“They’re good kids,” Davor said, not looking at Heath or me as he did, wearing a smirk that told me he kept an eye on them for us and knew some of the secrets Heath wanted to know but allowed his daughter to keep. “I tease Makalo, but Aisha raised him too well to ever need to see those chat logs. I don’t tease Carey, but I can see you’ve done the same for her every time I do my typical glance at the logs, just in case.”

“I had help,” Heath said, his eyes on me for a second before he looked back at Davor. “And thank you for keeping an eye on them.”

“No need to thank me,” Davor repeated from earlier. “Now, you were asking about what sort of plans I had for this hunt, weren’t you?”

“Ah, yes, back on topic. I was. I know Jacky would just charge through the wilderness, hunting a scent without some direction. She would find the werecat by running into it. Literally.”

“Thanks,” I said, shaking my head at that, trying to act annoyed when I knew he was right, and the teasing was good-natured. Niko covered his face and ducked down, muffling his laughter. Davor tried—and failed—to hide his amusement.

“Yes… Uh…” Davor’s chest shook a bit from the contained laughter he was fighting. “She has done that, yes. I considered it. It’s useful to have those who are brave and bold to lead a charge. We just need a way to give her a direction. Now, we’ll still have to do some hunting in the traditional sense, but we have moreresources than we once did. We’ve never found a way to initially find the target, but now we have a way to keep after it easier than we used to.”

“Oh?” I leaned forward, hoping for more detail.

“Niko, you understand. What’s the worst part about doing this?”

“The werecat is always too strong to take down in one fight,” he answered at Davor’s call. “We’ve each done this with Jabari. Even with Jabari, it’s often a long hunt of wounding, slowing it down, getting it cornered, and knowing when to back off and let it run for another hiding spot where we can corner it. Because it’s a werecat, it’s good at traversing the forest on natural instinct. Doesn’t leave a very good trail, loops back on itself, and sends its hunters into circles. When it thinks it can lose, it will do everything possible to shake those hunting it.”

“Well, now we have technology.” Davor got up and retrieved his bag. Once he was seated again, he opened it and pulled out a case. He handed it to Niko, who opened it and revealed a type of gun I was unfamiliar with. Not terribly hard to do, but I didn’t even know what general thing it might be.

“A dart gun?” Heath leaned over and pulled out a piece of it, looking it over. “Not like one I’ve ever seen, though.

“Modified for us,” Davor said with a nod. “It has the power necessary to sink what we need into a moon cursed. I tested it on Jabari since he’s the oldest and biggest willing tester I could get.” He made a face. “I wasn’t asking Hasan, obviously.”

“Every werecat gets huge when they enter Last Change, even the smallest of our kind. Good thinking,” Niko said, studying the dart gun with Heath. “But tranqs don’t work on our kind.”

“Agreed. It’s going to deliver this.” Davor lifted a small box that he didn’t open. “A small tracker. Now, the werecat’s body will reject it quickly, but once we engage with it, we should have a few days to keep on it before it’s pushed out, up to a week ifmy tests have been correct. I have more than one. Depending on the rejection time, we can hopefully track this werecat for up to a month.”

“Can I see?” Heath asked, the cunning I knew he had in him coming to the surface. This was useful stuff.

“I would open it and show you, but it’s delicate equipment, and I don’t want to risk its integrity before we have a chance to use it. I have to engineer each one of these by hand, and they’re all I have.” Davor put the box away. “Afterward, I’ll show them to you, though.”

“When did you start making these?” Niko asked, putting the dart gun away.

“Right after Germany. I needed something to keep my hands busy, and I saw a problem that we hadn’t faced yet because it hadn’t happened in some time. The case I asked you to leave in the trunk has the computer I’ll need to work all of this, hooked up with our satellite phone. Both should work just fine out there, thanks to that case.”

“Impressive.” Niko put the dart gun’s case on the table, locked up once again. “So, we track it traditionally, and once we engage, one of us will get a tracker into it. When we know it’s time to back off and let it run, we just track it that way without needing to make sense of all its ploys to throw us off.”

“Exactly. There’s one thing that could go wrong, but it’s just how it goes. If the werecat realizes something hit it and left something unnatural… it can just chew at it or tear it out. It would be unfortunate, but then we’ll know it’s possible.” Davor shrugged.

“How did you build these and test them with Jabari since April?” I asked suddenly, unable to get past that. Jabari was with Zuri and Subira since then, in the middle of nowhere.

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