Hearts Aflame Collection IV: 4-Book Bundle (9 page)

“You’re so brave, I can’t
imagine how tough that would be,” the young blonde nurse continued.

“I’ll be fine,” Erin
replied curtly. She didn’t enjoy discussing the finer details of her personal
life with strangers. But each time she attended a hospital appointment alone,
she felt dozens of pairs of judgmental eyes upon her. She could just imagine
what they were saying; wondering why she was alone and why the father wasn’t
there.

Throughout her life, Erin
had felt strong and independent. She’d never felt like she needed a man to
complete her. But there, in the hospital, carrying Sean’s baby, she suddenly
felt like only one half of a whole and that she was inexplicably incomplete. It
was a feeling that made her feel weak and vulnerable. She hated feeling that
way.

“What happened to the
father?” the nurse dared to ask, not picking up on Erin’s cold demeanor.

Erin never knew how to
answer when presented with his question.
Saying that he left
painted her to be some poor, defenseless victim who had made some bad choices
in life.
Erin didn’t like being seen as a victim. As much as she felt
weak and vulnerable in her present state, she didn’t want other people to view
her that way
too,
else it risked sticking long after
her baby had been born. No, she still wanted people to perceive her as strong
and independent, even if she no longer did.

“We broke up.” Erin kept
her answer as vague as possible.

“Oh, I’m sorry.” The nurse
sounded genuinely dismayed to hear this. “I’m sure you’ll be a great mom
though.”

Erin smiled at this.
Throughout the drama of her pregnancy, she’d not taken the time to stop and
query just how ready for motherhood she really was, but she felt comforted to
know that even a complete stranger had faith in her capabilities to raise a
child.

“I’ll do my best,” Erin
replied, her voice warmer than before. She had already vowed to love and care
for her child unconditionally. She wouldn’t threaten them with ominous visions
of darkness or deny them knowledge about their paternal father. Even though she
knew very little about Sean, she would happily divulge all the information she
had to her child. She owed her baby that at least.
Even the
more crazy parts about Sean’s belief that he was a werewolf.
Her child
wouldn’t be denied any aspect of truth.

Unlike
Erin.
Her lineage was shrouded in
mystery, relayed to her through cryptic
utterings
from her mother. All Erin knew about her paternal father was that he was the
harbinger of the darkness that supposedly engulfed her and cast a shadow over
her life.

“Have you thought about
any names yet?” the nurse inquired brightly.

Erin shook her head. Names
were the last thing on her mind. All she could think about was the present.
Once her baby arrived, she felt she’d instinctively know what to call it, or at
least she hoped so.

“Do you have someone you
can call? Someone who can bring you into the hospital when you go in to labor?”
the nurse asked as she scanned through Erin’s chart. Her tone was more formal
now, the friendly banter over and her brow furrowed with concern.

This was Erin’s final
hospital appointment before her due date. The next time she came, she would be
coming to give birth. It was a scary thought and one she’d not given much
credence to until that point.
A part of her kept hoping that
her mother would change her mind and come and stay with her but sadly that
never transpired.

“I have a friend I can
call,” Erin lied. She didn’t want to reveal the terrible truth, that she was
completely alone. She didn’t want the nurse to pity her, to regard her with sad
eyes when she realized that the only person Erin would be calling as she went
into labor was a cab.

“Good.” The nurse sounded
relieved. “Because when the big moment comes, you’ll want someone there to
comfort you. Labor can be a really scary time, especially for first time
mothers.”

“I’ll be fine,” Erin
reiterated her earlier statement. But she realized as she said it that perhaps
fine wasn’t good enough. She deserved to be great, wonderful even. Fine was
passable and Erin wanted more than that for both her and her child. She wanted
Sean but he was long gone, now existing only in her memory.

***

Alone in her house,
doubled over with pain, Erin tried in vain to focus her thoughts. The pain made
everything in her mind appear black and displaced.

“
Argh
!”
she screeched out again to the unfeeling night, stretching out her hands and
grabbing the sheets as she did so.

Her hair was now wet and
slick to her head. She was sweating profusely.

Panting, she tried to calm
herself down but each new wave of pain only sent her into a further state of
panic.

As the pain intensified,
Erin became certain that the moment was here, that she was going into labor.

She grabbed the sheets in
bunches, desperate to tear the bedding to shreds. She needed to do something,
anything, to alleviate the pain.

Then Erin felt the wetness
that was suddenly released from beneath her. It felt like she had just wet
herself, even though she was certain she hadn’t. The sheets around her
immediately darkened with the liquid she had released.

Looking down in disbelief,
Erin tentatively touched the now wet sheets and shook her head sorrowfully. Her
waters had just broken. There was now no doubt about it; she was in labor.

Erin screamed again in
both frustration and pain. Her baby was on its way, and she was stuck alone in
her house, in too much discomfort to even get off the bed. At least the phone
was close at hand. Frantically, she reached out and grabbed it, prepared to
dial 911 when a sound from downstairs made her stop dead.

The sound pierced through
the silence of the night, crashing into Erin with deadly, horrifying purpose.
It was the sound of breaking glass.
A lot of it, as though
one of her windows had just been broken in.

Erin’s blood instantly
turned to ice, and she sat frozen on her bed. Pain rippled through her but she
bit down on her lip, refusing to scream out. Someone had just broken in to her
house, she was certain of it. However quickly the emergency services arrived at
her home, she doubted they would be quick enough to save her from whoever had
just smashed their way in.

Holding her breath, Erin
listened to try and make out more sounds. As she did so, she heard the unmistakable
sound of someone ascending her staircase. Each step was well placed and
purposeful.

Fearful tears silently
soaked her cheeks as Erin waited on her bed, paralyzed from both terror and
pain. Someone was coming for her.

Glancing around the room,
Erin looked for something she could possibly defend herself with, but there was
nothing. Again, Erin felt unbearably alone, like a part of her was missing.

A sound from outside
grabbed her attention. A clattering noise, as if a garbage can had just been
overturned. Erin glanced hopefully in the direction of the window. Perhaps her
cries had awoken someone? Perhaps she needed to scream out again, to ask for
help. But her cries would surely be misinterpreted as the result of labor pains
and contractions. She wouldn’t be taken for the woman in mortal peril she
clearly was.

Beyond her bedroom door,
the footsteps from the staircase continued to approach, growing alarmingly
closer.

Panicked, Erin pulled
herself up in to ball as more pain knocked the air right out of her. As
terrified as she was, she reminded herself that she must remain calm, for the
sake of her baby. The last thing she wanted was for her child to become
stressed. Whatever had broken in to her home, she wouldn’t let them jeopardize
the safety of her baby.

But who was it? If it had
been generic robbers, surely they would now be ransacking the downstairs?
Fleeing with the plasma television and rooting through drawers and cupboards
for other valuables and keepsakes?

Whoever had broken in had
done so with a single-minded purpose.
A purpose that had
guided them past the valuables and straight upstairs to Erin.

Glancing at the phone,
Erin thought again about calling her mother, but she could still be of no use,
she was too far away to help. But Erin could call, just to say goodbye, as she
sensed that whatever was out in the hallway had terrible intentions for her.

The hairs on the back of
her neck stood to attention, sensing the dark terror floating through the air.

Erin’s
arms wrapped around her stomach.
Her maternal instinct was trying to surface, desperately wanting to
protect her unborn baby. But what could she do? She was helpless and completely
vulnerable.

More tears flooded her
cheeks, and Erin struggled to stop herself from sobbing aloud, causing her
chest to heave and her whole body to shake.

The footsteps stopped
outside her bedroom door. Erin almost wanted to call out and demand who was
there but she remained silent, not knowing what else to do. She didn’t want to
die, not there alone in her home, on the brink of giving birth.

The silence seemed to
stretch on indefinitely as Erin fought against countless contractions, which
were becoming more frequent and closer together. Her child’s birth was
imminent. She looked fearfully at her bedroom door; it was her only escape
route and it was now off bounds as outside it something was waiting for her,
and she sensed it was something with malicious intent.

As if confirming these
fears, she suddenly heard a low guttural growl coming from behind her bedroom
door.

“Oh God,” Erin uttered
fearfully as she steeled herself to face whatever was about to come crashing
into the room.

The growl came again, more
menacing this time.
A low, guttural sound that left no room
for interpretation.
Whatever was beyond her door was hostile.

Erin whimpered as she drew
herself further away from the door, her contractions continuing. The adrenalin
surging through her made her feel terrifyingly alert. Frantically, she wondered
if there was any way she could secure her bedroom door, to keep out whatever
was about to enter, but in doing so she would also deny herself her only means
of escape and she was in labor. Things were really starting to look dire for
her.

She remembered the first
night she had awoken to howling. It was the third night after Sean had left.
Her sleeping was already fitful, her dreams still tormented by images of
gnarling, snapping dogs. But this night when she woke, the howls weren’t
confined to her
nightmares,
somehow they had seeped
out in to the real world and were now delivering their moonlight serenade from
beneath her window.

The sound had made her
heart momentarily cease beating in her chest. Initially, she hoped she was
merely dreaming, but as her senses quickly returned to her she realized, with a
sinking feeling, that she most certainly was not. She was awake, which made the
howling all the more terrifying.

Every night, she hoped
that the howling would depart and never return. But night after night, beneath
the veil of darkness, the long drawn out wail came back, crying out into the
unforgiving night. Erin didn’t want to believe that the howling was in any way
connected to Sean’s werewolf delusions, but she couldn’t accept the fact that
the howling gave his theory some credence. It was a fact that didn’t sit well
with her.

***

“What if I’m losing my
mind?” she asked her mother during one of their phone calls.

“What do you mean?” her
mother asked, her voice concerned.

“I’m…hearing things,” Erin
explained vaguely, unsure if she wanted to divulge too much information for
fear of seeming mad.

“What sort of things?”

“Just…noises.”

“Bad
noises?”

“Unusual noises,” Erin
sighed. A part of her wondered if the howling existed only in her mind or if
there really was something keeping a nightly vigil at her house.

“Perhaps you’re just
dreaming them,” her mother suggested.

“
Mmm
.”
Erin wasn’t
convinced. She knew that the howling was very much real, what she needed to
know was where it was coming from and why it was happening at her house every
night.

Ideally, she needed to ask
Sean, to question if there was any connection between his cursed beliefs and
what was now happening to her. Between the howling and the canine-themed
nightmares, Erin was starting to doubt her resolve in sending him away, in
discounting what he said as merely madness.

***

And now there was a very
real threat just beyond her bedroom door. Something, which was now growling
menacingly, had broken in to Erin’s home and was set to enter the very room
where she was going into labor.