Áine stood with her feet placed parallel to her shoulders and huffed. Despite uncountable hours of practice, maintaining a relaxed but upright stance still took effort.

Summer lingered; its last grasp, a warm caress, streamed through the large windows, orienting her forward.

With Erato tucked under her chin, and its curved, smooth scroll cupped in her palm, she felt complete.

She'd named her violin after the muse of lyrical poetry; the instrument had never let her down.

'Until today,'  her jealous lycan groused. 'Bend your knees. You always forget,' Lyssa growled.

Áine heeded the instructions to avoid a backache by distributing her weight evenly. "Hush! Here we go. We will get it, Erato." Her fingers pressed on the strings. Arching her arm, she set the bow on them at the other end and angled her torso away to move it with ease.

When she slid along the fingerboard she detected it. The slight twang that did not belong to the note she'd been trying to perfect.

'Told you,'  Lyssa woofed.

Clicking her tongue, she put the bow on the bench by the foot of her bed and fiddled with the pegs to tune Erato. She tightened it, which led to a higher pitch, but then moved it towards herself to lower it.

Again she tried, but the string wouldn't cooperate.

'That's the problem with traditional pegs,'  Lyssa commented with mounting frustration.

"Tell me something I do not know," she muttered. Held in grooves by friction, unlike the modern version's metal screws, these required delicate adjustments—a fraction of a millimeter made all the difference.

'To you. As if the basic plebs would notice,'  Lyssa scoffed.

Unwilling to hand over Erato to the tuners, since morning, she'd struggled with this single note and hadn't yet mastered it.

'Your attachment to this particular fiddle is unhealthy,' Lyssa grumbled. 'I can't believe it has a name. There are three of us in this relationship--you, me, and it.'

Her mother once played this Stradivarius. Erato was the most precious thing Áine owned and represented the passing of the baton and acknowledged her status as a maestro in her own right. More so, in her hands, the violin became an extension of her and a conduit of the music she imagined.

It was more. There were no differences in the dimensions of Erato compared with the newer versions. She learned onthem. But a Stradivarius had an inner frame, while the Vuillaume sported an outer form. That structural build affected the sound due to the increased wood density.

She inhaled the familiar scent of spruce on the top, willow in the internal blocks and linings, and maple for the back, ribs, and neck. The hint of oils from the varnishes calmed her restless lycan down.

Just as she mastered the errant intonation, her phone, routed through the speaker, rang.

'Leon calling,'  announced a mellow female. It could've passed for a real, normal person, but for the underlying robotic undertone.

"Accept," she said, walking to the table and carefully placing Erato in her case.

"Áine."

The hair on her nape sprang up at the shrillness sharpening Leon's heavy baritone.

Even Lyssa tensed while they waited for their chief conductor to continue.

"The Berserker has ordered the Seraphim to perform at Hellridge. Josephine, Bernard, and I have refused—"

His words faded; only a phrase echoed through her skull.

Play at Hellridge. Play at Hellridge. Play at Hellridge. Hellridge.

Hellridge--where he existed. Where his evil thrived despite all his sins. He, the devil who ruled Hell's Gates, whose unspeakable handiwork she'd witnessed, whose actions had altered the course of her life irrevocably. Worse, he believed he'd already murdered her.

Lyssa's presence disappeared. In the emptiness, the gut-wrenching screams grew into an unending refrain.

A puppet without strings, Áine hit the floor. Carpet burns singed her skin and her lifeless arms flopped to her sides.

She wanted to clutch her throat as her windpipe contracted, but her limbs wouldn't move.

Her ragged breaths beat against her eardrums. Though her muscles froze, she shook so hard, that the cartilages and tendons binding her flesh to her bones threatened to snap.

The ticking of the clock turned into reverberating gongs. The light cotton fabric of her loose kaftan suffocated her. In the woods, a jaybird screeched, and the rustling leaves whispered sinister warnings.

The walls closed in. Time stopped.

Memories, no, a whirlwind of blurred sights, muddled sounds, and too many sensations melded together and sucked her in its vortex.

Keening shrieks filled her room, but they weren't hers.

Each a deafening crescendo before it was cut off abruptly.

Each silence signaled a slashed carotid artery... head ripped off... heart torn out...until another and then another joined the terrible chorus...

Each conveyed the savage butchery of a cold-blooded execution.

'Ground yourself, Áine,'  Lyssa snarled.

Her beast spoke from a distance as if she had abandoned her.

'No! I'm here!'  Her lycan tore through the paralysis afflicting her.

Áine's arm jerked and her listless fingers fell on the dagger strapped to her thigh.

Her loud, pulsating heartbeat reiterated she was in danger. She managed to grip the hilt of the weapon she never took off except while bathing. But the bone handle, edged with filigreed brass slipped as panic strangled her.

A heat wave washed over her. The endless ululations of death knells tortured her until she caught the whiff of lavender. Áine held her breath, drinking in the fragrance until her starved lungs hurt. The soothing balm she associated with her mother dragged her away from the chaos before it swallowed her whole.

She reached out. Her trembling fingers brushed the contours of the sideboard, up its carved leg, and over the solid teak surface. Seeking reassurance of her leather violin case, she pulled it down and hugged it.

While she rocked, her surroundings crept up to embrace her. The grandfather clock ticked in the living room. She buried her face in her bedspread, breathing in the fresh aroma of the sun-dried sheets. Even the knocks of acorn woodpeckers drilling into the elder redwoods. Twittering wrens. Croaks of the stupid frogs breeding in the lily pond under the window—all anchored her to the present.

She was home and safe... with her mum. Reality banished the terrors of her childhood.

Áine closed her eyes and concentrated on inhaling, counting to ten, before slowly exhaling through her mouth.

After a while, she registered a distraught Leon yelling her name.

"I'm f... fine," she whimpered. "T-talk later. D-disconnect." Each word was a glass shard she spat out.

On unsteady legs, she stumbled towards the door. Blind instinct led her through the darkness as she staggered out and crossed the space between the kitchen and the seating area of the hall. She groped the glass pane for the handle of the French doors. She wrenched them open to go to the gardens.

The cool breeze, bouquet of wildflowers, tinkling stream, and flagstones under her soles should've helped. But they didn't.

The stench of blood and gore had followed her. It was as if she'd bathed in it, rather it reeked out of her pores. There was no escaping it, for she was stained by it.

"Lyssa," she begged. "Please..."

Her lycan offered her only escape from the graveyard of death and decay, where the monsters searched for her. Even after all the years, she remained trapped at the site of unfathomable carnage. Instead, she carried that hellscape in her. She wasn't strong enough to fight off the past, let alone forget it.

A low rumbling growl erupted from deep within her chest. She trembled as her backbone arched. On all fours, she contorted while bones sprang from the joints with the sickening crackling of branches breaking. The agony of her insides melting and reforming was a relief as her mind shut down.

She collapsed and ripped off her kaftan. Her skin glistened with sweat as it thickened into a hide, stretching as coarse fur, each a needle prick, burst out. The dark and heavy coat rippled in the wind.

Áine watched through the tears as her hands distorted, her fingers lost their slim delicate length and her knuckles ballooned. Round claws ruined her manicured nails. From the thumbs, larger sharper talons, more dangerous than any dagger, lent her a sense of security. They could hook and sever a spine. While she still had feet instead of paws, her big toes sported the same appendage. She gritted her teeth as they morphed to lend her the agility of apes to climb with all four extremities.

A series of sneezes sprayed bloodied mucus as her facial features melted and hardened into an elongated snout and jaw. A soft tongue hung out, resting on fangs.

More so, her perception of the world around her changed. Intense, green gray blurs blinded her. Every spoor amplified, even the buzzing and flapping of the ladybirds' wings in the hydrangeas.

Áine's consciousness latched onto Lyssa's corporeal form. Her lycan—silent and patient—allowed it. Lyssa, a humanoid body covered in a pelt, with the head and tail of a wolf, and weaponized maw and appendages, knew no fear.

Her racing pulse slowed down. Though a mere phantasm, cocooned by her beast's powerful physique, Áine felt safe while Lyssa's animal instincts urged her to tear apart those she perceived as threats.

Except he wasn't here...

No longer a prey, Áine mutated into a predator.

'Baby doll, you're an apex hunter any of which ways,'  Lyssa crooned.

That was a lie. A malevolent spirit tainted the forestland between the residences. In the second most exclusive residential section in Roma, she still sensed him hiding in there, waiting to pounce on her...

'That was before. Now you have me, so you don't need to cower. I will take care of you. But have a cry... it helps.'

Lyssa threw her neck back and let out a howl that pealed through the stillness of the tree-draped hills.

An expression old as time, her wails rose and petered out, before resuming the ululation, releasing the emotions Áine couldn't bear.

A few beasts returned the call. Her pack heard her... and they responded to her distressed cries.

For Lyssa, the involuntary recalls were a secondhand experience. For Áine those were a pivotal cornerstone memory that defined her. Since she had mourned all she lost that fateful night. Worse, she would never be whole again.

Everything about her was a ruse, except the honesty of this raw, primal lament. Lyssa's haunting song vocalized Áine grieved for all she could have been. For those who would have been. But in a flash, they ceased to exist. For the unfairness of it all. And for the dead, now immortal and eternal, in her nightmares.

But the monster who slaughtered her birth parents and pack lived while she relived his fiendish atrocities. And each time she suffered, he mocked her.

Maybe if he'd killed her, she'd be free of him. He would have if she hadn't hidden. Or if he'd discovered she had not succumbed to the mortal wounds his talons and fangs inflicted on her. His venom coursed through her veins, tainting her forever.

But she was still a coward. If not, she would've faced him, not fallen apart at the mere mention of the place where he drew breaths, after he'd smothered the breaths of so many...

If you're new to my monsterverse, you might know Herod Oppenheimer! But if you do, drop me a line! It'll make my day! 

Also,  Áine is the most challenging character I have written. Others (Opal, Ari, even Asena are driven by very clear cut motives... but my poor Áine is like the puppy, she brings my protective instincts to the fore, yet I will do such terrible things to her... I almost feel guilty.  

So, what do you make of Áine at first glance?