Alpha X

The Tormented Angel

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—"