Hunted Predators✔️

Chapter Twenty-Two

A rap songs blairs in the background. The teenagers in the cramped dorm room talk, dance, or drink. His mouth sunken into a frown, Darko sips a drink and stares ahead, not particularly looking at anything.

A girl stands against one of the walls. Her eyes roam around the party, not settling on any one place too long, trying to find a safe place to land. She startles when she finds someone else looking right back at her.

From across the room, Darko catches her eye and smirks, walking over to her. Her lips twist into a nervous smile as he approaches. "Don't you want to join?" he asks.

 "I don't know how to play."

"Funny you would go to poker night then."

"Very ironic," she agrees. "It's almost like someone roped me into it."

"Do you want some?''

She looks down at the drink in his hand, her smile falling. "I don't really drink." 

Darko reaches out, grabbing the charm hanging around her necklacke with two fingers, perhaps using it as an excuse to step closer. Katherine goes still, and Darko acts too preoccupied by the cross to notice her reaction, or lack of one. He examines the cross, his head tipped toward her chest, his dark hair falling over his eyes. 

"I wonder," he says, a smirk playing on his lips, "how long a good little Catholic girl can hang with us."

"Hey, Darko, want to come to my beach house this weekend?"

Darko blinks, refocusing to find a boy from one of his classes standing in front of him. "I've got family obligations," Darko says.

"Oh."

A girl with long bottle blonde hair and a wide smile pushes past the boy standing in front of Darko to skip right to sitting next to him. "Hey, Darko." She greets him in a completely different tone than the boy before her, with a low, heady voice. Darko nods at her. "Carly." 

She smiles that wide smile. "It's Vanessa."

The boy standing in front of Darko coughs. "What about next weekend?"

"I didn't say no to this weekend." Darko says. The girl hooks her leg with the back of Darko's heel, leaning forward to whisper in Darko's ear. Darko smiles and wraps his arm around the girl's waist. "Will there be alcohol?" Darko asks.

"Yes?" the boy replies.

"Then see you Saturday."

"The way you killed that vampire," the girl whispers, "I think you're a hero." 

Darko sets down his drink, facing the girl. "Ever hook up with a hero?" 

The boy takes that as he is cue to go. He turns around and walks off as the blonde girl and Darko makeout. The girl slides her hand up Darko's shirt and her tongue into his mouth. Darko pulls away, laughing. 

"What?" she says. 

Grinning, Darko shakes his head and says breathlessly, "I don't even have to try."
...

Darko sits on a sofa with golden embellishments encrusting its rim, in a room that is spotless, without a chip or crack in sight, despite the age of its antique furniture and wallpaper.

As the group of adults argue around him, Darko's eyes wander around the room, hovering over the row of paintings mounted on the wall. He gaze hovers over an acrylic of a naked angel. A manicured hand flicks the side of his jaw. 

Making a face, he turns away from the painting to find Charlie Ann giving him a pointed stare. "Dad is talking to you."

Darko looks at General Grimson. "Yes?"