It was a dream. She was aware of the dream and completely unable to alter its narrative no matter how she tried. A mother and her three little girls were dancing and singing and skipping through warm summer woods. They gathered wild flowers for a garland to decorate the shrine to the Virgin Mary buried deep in the woods. They were having such fun together that they lost track of time and on the journey homeward the woods grew dark with night’s silent approach. As they skipped and giggled down the hill, nearly home, she noticed the forest had gone silent. The girls had stopped chattering and ran back to her as if they had become aware of something coming, a storm? The something - great and savage and dark exploded from the darkness. The dream always ended in the same way with her awake, shrieking, covered in sweat, then sobbing until dawn. She had grown used to not sleeping.

With each new moon the dream began afresh, growing more intense, more tangible each night. On the night of the full moon, all the violence and savagery came tearing through the brush – slavering, maddening evil. For the last three centuries the dream always ended in all the savagery and violence of the real nightmare that had stripped her of her sanity, innocence, mortality and three loving, beautiful little girls on the night of the full moon. She knew that on the night of its greatest violence she too was ripping someone from love and life. She couldn’t stop it. The beast that had murdered her precious children had left her alive with a curse that made suicide impossible and her morality subject to a monstrous curse. Tonight everything would finally change. The curse finally lifted, the beast destroyed and, perhaps, she would find peace, at last.

As the moon rose she felt blood, smelled blood, tasted blood. Her blood, his blood, all the blood in the world became a rushing torrent covering her. The wolf burst in her veins, pounded against her ribs as it sent lightning through her heart. She screamed and then howled as unearthly energies crackled and smoked her human self away and left behind only the monster. The beast that usually sought satisfaction in ripping innocent life to pieces was nowhere to be found. Instead she stood naked in the light of the moon, her faculties intact and her mind controlling this monstrous body as she had controlled her human one. The moon was not full and she had finally learned to summon the wolf, at will. After decades struggling against the nightmare that gripped her each full moon, she had succeeded in wresting the power from the wolf-monster-spirit that had controlled her. She finally had the power to destroy him, the monster who had killed her little girls in that Bavarian forest so long ago.

Rural Idaho’s dry summer forest trails and campgrounds had become his newest hunting grounds. She had been pursuing him for centuries across a world full of blood and madness. She could never catch him because he wanted his curse. He reveled in it. He had sought out his wolf and chose the bite instead of death. He was now immortal and could prey forever on the helpless and the innocent. Delicious death, he was the ultimate murderer. He was a predator even when not a wolf. When the moon rose full she lost him because she lost herself. Not this night. He was not a wolf and she was. She possessed her wolf for the first time and he was finally the prey, and the night air was rich with the scent of his blood as he sat unknowing, unsuspecting in the old hunting cabin deep in these dark woods. She now was stalking him.

She burst through the wooden door as if it was paper. She rushed into his living room and backhanded him against the wall, sending shelving and books and owner tumbling to the floor. She growled, powerful and fully as savage as she could be and still be a woman rather than a monster. “You murdered my babies.”

“How are you doing this? You can’t control the wolf. The moon is not even full.” She could smell the same fear that she heard rattle in his throat. Despite the fear and the question, he was ready for her as she rushed him, ravenous for his blood. Some day, he had supposed, one of his victims would find him. He had been preparing for that day for decades. The solid silver stiletto slipped into his hand from its hiding place in his sleeve and then neatly between her ribs, seeking her heart. She howled and then, all control lost in the pain of the wound and the 300 year old pain in her heart, she ripped through his throat spraying the cabin in blood and sending his head sliding across the floor. He would never again rise with the full moon--but neither would she. The wolf took hold in its panic at the mortal wound, blindly plunging her through the night, deeper and deeper into the forest. When she finally regained control she lay in a spreading pool of blood encompassed by a larger pool of brilliant light from a moon just one night short of full. She smiled and wept, looking into the spreading blackness, knowing that before the moon set, she would be singing and dancing with her little ones again.