Hunted Predators✔️

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

"What did you do?"

Katherine and Darko look away from each other and heads turn to the hole in the school bus. A blonde woman stands at the entrance of the whole. Behind her is a small group of armed men with their guns trained on Darko. "Drop the axe," the woman says.

"Headmaster Geller?" a student cries. Katherine's mouth drops open. "Drop it," the headmaster barks. Never taking his eyes off her, Darko lowers his axe. For once, he seems at a loss for words. "Come with me," she says.

Darko snarls, "like hell I am."

"Either come with me or get a bullet in the brain. The choice is yours. Oh, and Katherine." Her eyes find Katherine's. "You too."

One of the gunmen jerks Katherine up by her shoulders, shoving her forward. She glances back in time to see the remaining gunmen drag the vampire's body away.

One of the men ties Darko's hands behind his back and shoves a bag over his head, then pushes him into a van parked near the school bus. It's the last thing she sees before a bag is shoved over her head and everything goes black. She's shoved in the back of the van with Darko. For a moment, there's no sound except the tires tearing against the gravel. Then:

"Darko-" Katherine starts.

"I don't fucking know," Darko says.

"I didn't say anything," Katherine snaps, fighting to keep her voice steady and cold. She could let the tears roll down her face, but the bags over both their heads wouldn't hide any voice cracks.

"Well you were about to ask a question," Darko says.

"Great, Darko. That's really helpful. Let's just sulk around and wait to be murdered."

"If they were going to kill us, they would have done so already."

"How do I have a conversation with you when you started with, 'shut up with your dumb questions, you stupid idiot'?"

Darko glares at the ground. "Fine," he mutters. "My bad."

"I'm rolling my eyes, Darko."

"I apologized."

"My bad? My bad isn't an apology. It's what you say when you bump into someone on the subway."

"What do you want from me? To pull all the answers out of my asshole?"

"That'd be fantastic."

"Why don't you focus on yourself."

"I'm not the one who had the brilliant plan to go hunting for a vampire."

"At least I did something."

"Fat load of good it did us! One axe through the face later, and we're still kidnapped."

"Are you mad I did it?"

"I specifically told you-"

"He was about to kill you."

"-that I didn't want to kill anyone else! That I wanted to be a less terrible person! And he was about to kidnap me, not kill me."

"Killing the vampire was always the plan. Wait, did you say else? Who else have you killed?"

"Don't change the subject! Finding the vampire is what you told me we were doing. I love, I just love how you had the time to find and smuggle an axe onto a school trip but couldn't spare five seconds to give me a heads up."

"Well," Darko says under his breath, "Maybe if you didn't let the vampire get away in the first place..."

"Wow. I have dead relatives too. You don't see me bringing up old Grandma Jones every time I want to win an argument."