Davan

History

• Biography

  This was not the family business. Far as his family was concerned, it was no one's business but the cops'. Some sick bastard had taken her heart out, sure; didn't mean it was anything weirder. They understood his desire to get to the bottom of it, but when he started obsessing over the layers of claw that had torn off on the way through her breast, they tried to dissuade him. It was just some trick of a budding serial killer, a weird signature they wanted to leave. People were sick and desperate for fame, after all, and if this would get true crime books written about them in the future, everything would be worth it. Sleepless nights scouring the internet for answers had finally turned up something that felt like an answer. Werewolves ate hearts. It wasn't a compulsion he recalled from the horror movies he watched as a kid, but when it went on to say they met their end through a silver knife, he knew what he had to do.
  
  He'd spent too many nights listening to Delilah cry for want of her mama, cradling her uselessly in his arms and remembering all the articles he'd read during Jacqueline's pregnancy about how children bonded with their parents. At such a young age, the strongest bond the baby had was with her mother. The smell comforted an infant. It was a thing gone from this world, torn out with her heart by that ugly fucking beast. Daddy's arms would never be good enough. Even singing the most delicate lullabies, she'd calm only so long as it took for him to close his own eyes, at which point she'd start in again. With that possibility burning in his blood, determination to make sure this did not become the serial event his family claimed, he knew fatherhood had been taken from him, too. He couldn't hack it, wouldn't be so irresponsible as to take a tiny baby out on the road. She was dropped off at her aunt's, ostensibly for just a few days, while he got his head screwed on straight.
  
  Instead, he drove off and never returned. Sometimes, he thought maybe he'd overreacted, that what some hunters said about it being a calling was bullshit. He'd left behind what could've been a good life, even with that heartbreak. He'd stood to inherit his father's contracting business and had already been at worksites for years, helping out, learning the ins and outs of the work. Chances were he wouldn't have been ready to take over the position til about now, as it happened, but his portion of the work made a fine enough wage. If he hadn't felt so sure in that month of mourning, he might have bloomed into a fine father, maybe even found some other girl to marry, act as a mother to Delilah. He knew too many families who'd been torn apart somehow than to think doing so would be a betrayal to Jackie's memory. Sometimes, life happened and it happened hard and people did what they had to do to get by; nothing wrong with that. If she was looking down from Heaven, it was knowing that she was not on Earth; she would understand. She'd been a practical woman. Wanting to ensure he fathered no further children, he had a vasectomy shortly after leaving home.
  
  Mostly, though, there was the righteousness. He sniffed out countless more werewolves, moon-bound to do the same thing to some other family as their brethren had done to his. He found countless ghosts, snuffing the lives of teenagers just for being teenaged enough to make good on dares, never given the chance to age and wise up. Vampires turning sleepy villages into monsters' nests. It wasn't vengeance that continued to motivate him, for he was lucky enough that his first kill was precisely what he wanted, far as he could tell, considering there were no witnesses. No, he'd just pointed his car toward home and thought of all the other families that thing might have ruined, all the heartache and nightmares and uncertainty, and couldn't bring himself to go. He looped around down the highway instead; he was going to need more guns.
  
  Unlike most hunters, Davan has sectioned out only a part of his life to the hunt. Months at a stretch are spent working as a contractor, until the cry of the road becomes too loud to ignore. He makes little lives for himself in this time and does well in social environments. At times, when the money runs out before a hunt is done with, he's resorted to stealing from the monsters he kills, selling off the artifacts to pawn shops for a fraction of what they'd be worth to the right buyer.
  
  He isn't without sympathy for monsters in general, seeking out only the killers. There is a part of him that suspects it's only a matter of time but, with age, he's learned that he can be dangerous, too - that it may be only a matter of time before he wakes up and pulls the trigger on an innocent. He doesn't immediately trust the more monstrous among the population, but treats them with some degree of respect all the same.
  
  After a long while of hunting, Davan grew disgusted with the violent, wrathful man he'd become. Fearing for his soul, he quit hunting at the age of 33 and returned to working as a handyman. He took far too much work on for a single man for a couple years, working himself to the bone so he wouldn't have the opportunity to dwell too hard on his past. This had begun to take its toll on his body, though. Presently, he's found work with a housing charity, helping to build its profile (as he has a very marketable look and personality) and working as a foreman, though he'll often do all kinds of labor around a worksite, too. Those in the neighborhood occasionally recommend him as a low-cost and sympathetic option for various types of work, but he no longer advertises his services as a handyman openly.