Hearts Aflame Collection IV: 4-Book Bundle (8 page)

Sitting up in bed, Erin
ran a hand through her bedraggled hair before rubbing her protruding stomach in
a gesture to sooth both herself and her baby. Since waking, she’d not yet heard
the sound that she was convinced was responsible for breaking her rest.

Barely daring to breathe,
Erin sat and strained to hear the now familiar bloodcurdling sound. Around her,
the house seemed teasingly
stoic
, almost mocking her.
Nothing moved, nothing stirred.
Had she dreamed the terrible
sound?

No, Erin was certain that
she must have heard it to have woken up. Tensely, she sat on her bed and
waited.

After a few moments, her
patience was rewarded. Sounding as if it came from directly beneath her window,
there was a low, plaintive howl, which immediately chilled Erin to her core.

Night after night, the
howling awoke her. Sometimes it sounded like there was just one animal howling
into the night, other times there seemed to be many voices, stringing together
in one long desperate cry.

Biting her lip, Erin
wrapped her arms protectively around herself and burrowed beneath her bed
sheets.

The howl pierced the dark
night air once more, carrying up to her.

Erin pictured some wolf or
dog, beneath her window, crying out to her. The image troubled her deeply
though she didn’t understand why.
Dogs howling was
hardly a new phenomenon, yet since she became pregnant, the howling had
intensified.

Initially there would be a
single howling cry every other night,
then
it became a
nightly occurrence before ultimately there were numerous voices crying out. At
times, it sounded as though her home were entirely surrounded by canine
creatures.

In her more logical
moments, Erin told herself that it was all nothing more than coincidence. She
blamed Sean and his crazy theories for getting inside her head and making her
question her own reality.

But there was a menacing
undertone to the howls that Erin couldn’t ignore. To anyone else, it would
perhaps sound mournful; a wolf crying out for its lost pack, but to Erin it
sounded sinister. A creature was calling out, not for others, but for her. Each
time she heard the howl, she was certain that it was a warning. It was the
reason she could not sleep through its terrible moaning.

“Just go away,” Erin
hissed the words to herself.

She’d become so distraught
about the noises at night that she’d even approached her neighbors about it,
and their responses troubled her.

“Have you heard all that
howling at night?” Erin asked her neighbor, Frank, one morning when she went to
retrieve her mail.

Frank was divorced and in
his mid-forties. His three children came to stay with him on alternate
weekends. He was pleasant with a bright smile, crinkled eyes and a receding
hairline. When Erin had first moved in, he’d invited her out for a drink and
she’d politely declined.
Not that Frank wasn’t handsome for
his age,
but perhaps he was too safe. As her mother would say, there was
no darkness in Frank. He was a wholesome, decent guy. He worked in accounts,
paid his mortgage on time and tried to be the best father he could be to his
children.

For Erin, Frank would have
been a decent dating prospect, which was precisely the reason she turned him
down.

Gazing at him in the pale
morning light, Erin wished she could yearn for someone free of darkness and
danger. Frank was a good man. Why couldn’t Erin have fallen for him?

“Howling?” Frank looked
puzzled as he stood beside his mailbox in his sweats and white tee. Erin
couldn’t help but notice that for his age he was in decent shape. She wished
the same could be said for
herself
. With her swollen
stomach, her entire body looked bloated and disproportionate. She missed her
pre-pregnancy svelte physique.

“Yeah, at night I keep
getting woken up by howling.” Erin blushed as she explained, already feeling
foolish for having brought it up.

Frank looked at her and
shook his head. “I’ve not heard anything. Perhaps there are some stray dogs
about. I wouldn’t worry about it too much.”

He went to leave, to
return to his house and his new girlfriend. While she wasn’t nearly as
attractive as Erin, she was close to Frank’s age, also divorced and most importantly,
available. Frank wasn’t the sort of man to pine after a woman who wasn’t
interested in him.

Erin sometimes wondered
what he thought of her; pregnant and abandoned by the father. She wondered if
Frank judged her, but he seemed too kind for that. She imaged he perhaps pitied
her for ending up in such an unenviable position.

“Your children haven’t
heard anything?” Erin called after him, desperate for some acknowledgement that
someone else had heard the infernal howling.

“They’ve not mentioned anything,”
Frank replied, sadness pinching at the edge of his eyes. He did pity Erin; she
saw it then. He pitied her because she was alone in a house without anyone to
make her feel safe.

“Okay.” Erin smiled
thinly, wishing she’d never brought it up.

“It’s a difficult time,
being pregnant,” Frank commented sympathetically. “You just need to rest and
take it easy. If I hear anything strange at night, I’ll make sure to check it
out.”

Erin’s smile broadened.
“Thank you.”

“Anytime.”
Frank waved at her before disappearing back in to
his house. Erin watched him leave as a sinking feeling avalanched through her.

Frank was kind and
chivalrous. He wouldn’t just leave the woman who was carrying his child. Not
like Sean.

Erin’s hands bunched at
her sides. Every time she thought about Sean, her blood almost boiled over in
rage. This tended to coincide with her baby kicking her, as though mirroring
the agitation in her thoughts.

***

In her bed, Erin tried to
wish the howling away but it seemed to only grow louder. There were multiple
voices now, all howling in unison. It felt like they were on every side of her
house. How could Frank possibly sleep through it all? It was almost deafening.

As the pitch within the
howl intensified, Erin fearfully crept from her bed, desperate to peek from a
window and catch a glimpse of one of the canine callers. She’d never yet
actually seen anything around her house, which made her feel as though she were
losing her mind. From the level of sound, she was certain that as soon as she peered
from behind her curtains she’d see a circle of wolves all neatly arranged
around her home, their heads bent back to the moon as they released their high,
drawn out cry.

Taking careful, quiet
steps, Erin approached her bedroom window and the howling seemed even louder.
Keeping one hand protectively wrapped around her stomach, she carefully peeled
back her curtain and looked out in to the night.

To her surprise, the world
appeared as it should. There were cars neatly parked on driveways, currently
dark and idle. Homes were cast in shadow as the occupants soundly slept. There
seemed to be no one or nothing outside, yet the howling persisted.

Erin strained to focus her
attention closer to her house, to the wall directly beneath her bedroom window.
As she lowered her eyes, she heard something move in the bushes by her front
door. She caught a fleeting glimpse of something silver and then the howling
suddenly ceased.

Desperately, her eyes
searched the point below her bedroom window, trying to find what she had seen,
but now there was only darkness. At least the howling had stopped. Sighing
wearily, Erin considered going back to bed. She yearned to creep back in
beneath the covers and just sleep. But she knew that the moment she dared to
close her eyes again, the howling would resume,
it
always did.

“
Dammit
.”
Erin moaned in frustration at her sudden desire to urinate. She felt that she
spent half her life on the toilet now that her baby was pressing down on her
bladder. Reluctantly, she stood up and walked over to her en suite bathroom,
grateful for its proximity to her bed. Since seeing the glimpse of something
silver, she didn’t fancy venturing out beyond her bedroom while it was still
dark.

Sat on the toilet and
grateful for the relief, Erin tried to bring the brief image she’d seen outside
to the forefront of her mind. Had it just been a trick of the light or had she
actually seen something? The howling had certainly stopped, which made her
believe that she’d spooked whatever it was that was so determined to keep a
vigil beneath her bedroom window. But what was it? Surely it wasn’t a wolf? It
all made no sense. Erin refused to believe Sean’s mad theories, even in her
fragile state.

Eventually, she made her
way back to her bed. Still, the world outside remained quiet and peaceful. Erin
felt relieved that the howling was now gone, at least for the time being. She
looked eagerly at her bed. It looked so comfortable and inviting.

As she lowered herself
down and pulled the sheets tightly around her, she glanced uncertainly at her
bedside light. She considered turning it off. A part of her thought that it
signaled to whatever it was outside that she was still awake. If the house was
plunged into darkness, the howling might not resume.

But the thought of being alone
in the darkness filled Erin with terror. Considering her mother was so certain
that she desired the dark, Erin now cowered in its presence, unable to tolerate
it even for a second. She yearned for the safe glow of light, to have no
shadows to conceal any potential dangers. Within the light, Erin felt safe. The
lamp would remain on.

“Werewolves aren’t real,”
Erin told the empty space around her. She was trying to console her worried
mind. She kept fretting over what she had potentially seen. That flash of
silver, it could have been the fur of something, the fur of a wolf.

“Werewolves aren’t real,”
she said again, like a child at bedtime repeating the mantra about there being
no monsters in the closet or beneath the bed. She needed to reassure her fears,
to remind herself of how ludicrous it all was.

“You’re just tired,” she
told herself, rolling over on to her side, which took her a couple of attempts
to achieve.

She lay awake, waiting for
the return of the howling but everything remained silent and still. A peaceful
atmosphere fell over her bedroom, which was a welcome respite from the feelings
of terror and unease she’d been experiencing. Erin allowed herself to relax.
Glancing at her bedside clock, she saw that it was only two in the morning. She
dared to believe that she could actually get some sleep. The prospect was too
delicious for words. Erin longed for sleep like a man wandering the desert
longs for water.

Just as Erin was on the
cusp of sleep, her body jolted her back to a state of high alert. This time it
wasn’t the howling beyond her window that had woken her but a sharp, persistent
stabbing pain that fanned out from her stomach and consumed the lower half of
her body.

***

“
Argh
!”
Erin called
out to the emptiness in agony as the fire of pain burnt through her body.

“
Argh
!”
she cried again as a second surge of pain swept over her.

Managing to sit up, Erin
curled herself in to a ball, protectively running her hands over her baby bump.
She had no idea what was happening, only that it was excruciatingly painful.

She cried out again as a
fresh batch of stabbing sensations ballooned within her. If the howling hadn’t
managed to wake her neighbors, she had no doubt that her screaming would.

Perspiration prickled on
her forehead as Erin rocked back and forth on her bed, taking long, deep
breaths, trying not to let the pain overwhelm her. A persistent, worried voice
at the back of her head questioned if she was going in to labor, but she
dismissed it. If she were going in to labor, her waters would have broken.
Besides, she wasn’t due for another week yet.

“
Argh
.”
She winced in
pain, squeezing her eyes shut. When she opened them again she fixated on the
phone, still atop her spare pillow. As she eyed it, she considered calling her
mother. But what good would that do? Her mother lived several hours away. Erin
needed more than soothing words spoken through a
telephone,
she needed actual, physical help. The pain pulsating through her was so great
that she doubted she could even make it off the bed unaided.

She wished for Sean. In
spite of everything, she wished he was there to offer a hand for her to hold if
nothing else. If only she hadn’t been so quick to judge and send him away.

***

“You’re going to be a
single mom?” the nurse had asked, raising an eyebrow, pity coating each word.

Laid out on the bed in a
most inelegant position, Erin could only nod.