Page 371 of Dirty Discipline, Vol. 1

Morgan raised his head, his eyes stormy with desire. All around them the night brightened, and she heard him swear an instant before she vanished right out of his arms.

Chapter Four

“Where did you find this?” Mr. Russell, the high school science teacher asked as he turned the huge foot-long clawed tip of the massive spider leg over in his hands. He ran his fingers over the sporadic hairs, staring and shaking his head in wonder, then looked up at both Morgan and Audrey. “Is this a practical joke? It can’t be real.”

“It is,” Morgan said somberly.

It was nine o’clock at night, and what he was still doing at the school Audrey couldn’t fathom, but she stood silently beside Morgan, leaned up against the teacher’s desk and waited for the scene to complete itself so she could go to bed. Not that she was tired. She reached up and rub at her neck and shoulder, the skin there still tingling with the memory of being speared by the fangs of that spider. No, she wasn’t tired. Not at all. In fact, it would be nothing short of a miracle if she ever slept again without the aid of some serious prescription medication.

“You should have seen it, Mr. Russell,” Morgan said, affecting a wide-eyed, golly-gee, Leave-It-To- Beaver tone. “The web stretched across the entire road. The spider that must have made it was huge.”

There was a brief pause, and then his foot stepped not so gently down on hers.

“Peter will be happy to show you where we found it,” Audrey said. He pressed a little harder on her foot, and she reluctantly amended herself. “We both will.”

The teacher turned the leg over in his hands yet again, making no acknowledgment of her deliberately fumbled lines. “It must be that nuclear waste facility,” he murmured. “Only radiation could have such an effect on a spider.”

For anyone to make such a conclusive leap in logic was ludicrous, but Audrey only nodded. “Damn those forward-thinking scientists, the politicians that back them and the rabid, extremist environmentalists who have yet to be born. Damn them all to hell.”

Russell furrowed his brows in confusion. “Envi… vironmen… what did you say?”

“Heh,” Morgan tried to laugh. “She’s having a hard day.” He moved his foot off of hers, but maintained physical contact with her when he lay his hand on her backside instead.

Audrey stiffened, but he wasn’t fondling her. His hand was flat across her right bottom cheek, pressing slightly into the soft, vulnerable flesh with unmistakable warning.

“A very hard day,” she agreed, and swallowed hard, the tiny hairs along her nape still prickling with dread. Her bottom prickled now, too. Beneath his hand. Around his hand. He had a very hard hand, and her bottom remembered what kind of punishment he was capable of dishing out, even if her brain and mouth chose not to.

“Ah,” the grey-haired teacher said, his attention shifting momentarily back to Audrey. He looked at her over the top of his glasses. “Your father still missing, is he? Very sorry to hear that.” His gaze shifted, as if unable to be distracted, back to the leg. “Very sorry indeed.”

Morgan moved his hand, two gentle warning pats and glared at her.

Audrey stiffened, holding herself perfectly still while she waited for him to remove his palm. When he didn’t, she cleared her throat. “Yes, uh… I fear what may have happened to him.”

“As you should,” their teacher said. “This,” he shook the spider leg at her. “This is nothing to take lightly.” Then he turned back to Morgan. “Would you mind if I kept this, my boy? I have colleagues back at the university that I’d like to consult with.”

Morgan stuck out his hand to shake Russell’s. “Thank you for all your help,” he said. But though he smiled when he said it, there was an odd note to his tone that caught Audrey’s attention. To her, it almost sounded like he was bidding the man farewell.

As they were leaving the classroom, Audrey said, “You were telling him goodbye, weren’t you?”

“I told you not to get attached.”

“Are…” Audrey swallowed hard. “We’re not going to have to watch him getting eaten, are we?”

“No,” Morgan assured her. “It’ll happen sometime in the night. We won’t see anything at all.”

As they walked out of the school, the lights shifted around them, becoming a slightly darker shade of grey.

“The scene stopped,” Audrey said, looking up at the seemingly dimmer light from the street lamps that lined the road. “What now?”

Morgan arched his eyebrows in a kind of shrug. “Now I walk you home and we get some sleep. Tomorrow’s Saturday. So, we’ll get up early and continue searching spider-infested countryside for your father.”

The movie world was very still as they walked home. There was no breeze or croaking frogs and chirping crickets to serenade the way. No other people strolled the sidewalks in the night, no cars drove past in the streets. For the most part, the houses they passed were dark, although here and there a light could be seen behind curtain-drawn and silhouette-less windows.

“I hate the nights here,” Audrey said. “They feel so eerie.”

She hugged her shoulders as if she could hold back a shiver that had nothing to do with being cold.

“I’ve gotten used to them,” Morgan said. “It kind of makes me wonder how I’ll adjust to having a world full of sound again.”

---