Chapter 8: The Falling Horde
The first spider hit his cheek.
A tiny thing, no bigger than a fingernail, its legs a frantic tickle against his skin. Tom flinched. Annalise didn't. She caught it between her thumb and forefinger, a motion so casual it could have been plucking a stray thread from his collar. Then she squeezed.
The pop was barely audible. But he felt it—a tiny vibration through her fingers, still pressed against his face. She wiped the residue on his lips.
"More coming," she said.
He looked up. The web was shedding. Not a cascade—a slow, deliberate release, as if the ceiling had decided to rain instead of collapse. Spiders of every size descended on strands of silk, their bodies backlit by the moon, their legs pedaling air. Some landed on the operating table. Some landed on the floor. Some landed on them.
Annalise laughed. Low and throaty, the sound of someone who had just discovered a secret.
"This is perfect," she said. "This is exactly what I wanted."
She pushed him back. His shoulders hit the steel table, the cold biting through his shirt. Above him, the ceiling shifted with movement—thousands of legs, thousands of bodies, all responding to the disruption, all descending.
"Don't move," she said.
He didn't.
She climbed onto the table, straddling his hips. Her slip dress had ridden up, and he could see the muscles in her thighs, taut and defined. The ichor from the tarantula had dried on her skin, a dark map of violence.
A spider landed on her shoulder. She didn't brush it away. Instead, she plucked it off with two fingers and held it up to the moonlight. A wolf spider, fat and brown, its legs curling defensively.
"Watch," she said.
She placed it on his chest.
Tom's breath caught. The spider sat there for a moment, orienting itself, its legs testing the fabric of his shirt. Then it started to move—toward his neck, toward the pulse he could feel hammering in his throat.
Annalise caught it with the clamp.
She had retrieved it from the table beside them, the same clamp she had used on the tarantula. Now she positioned it over the spider, pinning it to his sternum. The creature's legs splayed, its body pressed flat against his chest.
He could feel its heartbeat. Or maybe that was his own.
"This one's small," Annalise said. "Quick death."
She pressed down with the clamp. The spider's body compressed, its exoskeleton cracking with a sound like stepping on a potato chip. Fluid seeped through his shirt, warm and wet.
He should have been disgusted. He was hard instead.
Annalise noticed. Of course she noticed. She shifted her weight, grinding her hips against his, and smiled.
"You like this," she said. It wasn't a question.
"Yes."
"Say it."
"I like this."
She leaned down, her hair falling around his face like a curtain. "You like watching me kill things."
"Yes."
"You like feeling them die on your skin."
"Yes."
She kissed him. Hard. Her teeth caught his lower lip, and he tasted blood—his own this time. She pulled back, her eyes bright and wild.
"Good," she said. "Because there's more."
Another spider landed on his forearm. She caught it with her bare hand, crushing it against his wrist. The pop was louder this time, wetter. She smeared the remains across his skin like war paint.
"One," she said.
Another landed on his thigh. She shifted, pressing her knee down on it, grinding it into the fabric of his jeans. He felt the crunch through the denim.
"Two."
A third spider dropped onto her shoulder. She didn't even look. Her hand moved in a blur, snatching it, squeezing it, letting the pieces fall onto his chest.
"Three."
They kept coming. The web was disintegrating, the spiders falling faster now, a slow-motion blizzard of legs and bodies. Annalise moved with a precision that bordered on choreography. Her hands, her feet, her knees—everything was a weapon. She crushed them against his body, against the table, against herself, each death a tiny punctuation mark in the sentence they were writing together.
Tom stopped counting. He just watched. The moonlight caught her in fragments—the curve of her shoulder, the line of her jaw, the flash of her teeth. She was beautiful in the way that a storm is beautiful. Not safe. Not kind. Just inevitable.
A large spider—not as big as the tarantula, but close—landed on the table beside his head. Annalise saw it. Her eyes lit up.
"This one's mine," she said.
She dismounted him, her feet hitting the floor with a slap. The spider was already moving, scuttling toward the edge of the table. She caught it with her heel.
Not a full step—just a casual press, her weight shifting onto the ball of her foot. The spider's legs curled inward, its body flattening against the steel. She held it there, not killing it, just pinning it.
"Come here," she said.
He sat up. His shirt was ruined—stained with spider guts and his own sweat. He didn't care.
She gestured to the floor. "Kneel."
He slid off the table, his knees hitting the linoleum. The cold shot up through his legs, sharp and grounding.
She lifted her foot. The spider was still alive, still twitching, its body dented but not broken. She held it up for him to see.
"Open your mouth," she said.
He did.
She pressed her heel against his lips. He could taste the spider—bitter and strange, like copper and dust. She pushed it into his mouth with her toes.
"Bite," she said.
He bit.
The spider burst between his teeth, its fluids flooding his tongue. He gagged, but he didn't spit. He swallowed. The texture was wrong—too many legs, too much shell. But he swallowed it all.
Annalise watched him with an expression he couldn't read. Pride? Curiosity? Love?
"Good boy," she said. "Now get back on the table."
He climbed up. The steel was cold against his back, but he barely noticed. His blood was running hot, his skin tight, his heart a drumbeat in his ears.
She climbed on top of him. Her dress was ruined, stained with ichor and sweat. She pulled it over her head and tossed it aside.
No underwear. Of course not.
She straddled him, her hands on his chest, her hips hovering just above his. The remaining spiders were still falling, but slower now—the web exhausted, the survivors scattered. One landed on her shoulder. She brushed it off without looking.
"I want you inside me," she said. "Right now."
He fumbled with his belt, his hands shaking. She helped—impatient, efficient—and then he was free, and she was sinking onto him, and the world narrowed to the point where their bodies met.
She rode him hard. No preamble, no tenderness. Just the slap of skin and the creak of the table and the wet sounds of the spiders still dying beneath her feet.
He grabbed her hips. She grabbed his throat.
"Look at me," she said. "Don't close your eyes."
He didn't. He watched her—the flush spreading across her chest, the sweat beading on her forehead, the way her mouth fell open when he hit the right angle.
She reached down without breaking rhythm. Her hand found something on the floor—a spider, still twitching—and she brought it up, crushed it against his lips.
"Open."
He opened. She fed him the pieces.
The taste was worse the second time. Or better. He couldn't tell anymore.
She leaned down, her breasts pressing against his chest, her mouth at his ear. "I love this," she whispered. "I love that you let me do this. I love that you want it."
He couldn't speak. His throat was too full—of spider, of her, of everything.
She bit his earlobe. Hard.
He came.
The orgasm ripped through him like a current, arching his back, curling his toes, pulling a sound from his throat that was half-moan, half-scream. Annalise rode him through it, her hips grinding, her nails raking down his chest.
When he finally went limp, she wasn't done. She kept moving, slower now, her eyes locked on his.
"Watch," she said again.
And he did. He watched her chase her own release, her rhythm growing erratic, her breath coming in gasps. He watched her throw her head back, her hair spilling down her shoulders, her mouth forming words he couldn't hear.
He watched her come apart.
When it was over, she collapsed on top of him. They lay there, tangled and spent, the operating table cold beneath them, the web above them finally still.
The air smelled like copper and sex and death.
Tom's hand found hers. Their fingers laced together, sticky with spider guts and sweat.
"That was..." He couldn't find the words.
"Yeah," she said. "It was."
She lifted her head, her chin resting on his chest. In the moonlight, her eyes were dark and unreadable.
"We should do this more often," she said.
He laughed. It hurt—his ribs, his throat, his everything. But he laughed.
"Yeah," he said. "We should."
She smiled. It was a real smile, soft and warm, the kind of smile that belonged to a different person. The kind of smile that made him remember why he loved her.
Then she reached up and plucked another spider from the web above them.
"One more," she said. "For the road."
He didn't argue.
He just watched.