Free Demon Street Blues by Starla Silver

don’t know that? Why do you think it’s taken me this long? I wanted to leave with Emily, back when she went to college. But I stayed, Charlie. Mom and Dad were gone and Melinda was a wreck. But she’s getting better now and Mom and Dad aren’t coming back. They’re gone.” Michael took a frustrated breath. “Have you ever considered that maybe it’s just time to move on? Let someone else handle all this supernatural, protecting-the-isle bullshit…”
    “Someone else? Like who?”
    “I don’t know, Charlie. Just, not us. Hasn’t our family given enough? What law says it has to be a Howard sacrificing their lives to protect this island? And for what? To die trying to find a magical power source hidden on the Isle hundreds of years ago. Look, I get why you don’t want to leave this place. You fear being away from the Isle might trigger your curse. And you feel a responsibility to be here. That it’s your solemn fucking duty to be here. But I don’t, Charlie. And that’s the God’s honest truth. All this place does, is take from us.”
    Charlie dropped his head, no idea how to respond. On so many levels, he agreed with his brother. But the obligation that plagued him to uphold his family’s heritage overshadowed everything else. Everything except, as Michael said, the fear that something would trigger his curse.
    They finished readying their diving equipment in silence. Charlie’s thoughts strayed to the day his life had changed, the day he had lost control of his own future.
    It was ten years ago now, he was only sixteen, and yet he remembered every detail as if it had just happened. They had been hiking on the Isle, deep in the woods. Michael, Charlie and their father, Jack.
    He saw the pathway they had been hiking, clearly in his mind. They were walking down hill, hurrying to get back to their campsite as the sun had set and the moon was rising up over the tall pines and maple trees. It was big and bright, but still a day from full.
    Charlie could not help but grin as he remembered them laughing. He could not recall the joke, but their father had told it, and it wasn’t even remotely funny, and yet they had laughed and laughed. They had been laughing so hard that the attack caught them completely by surprise.
    A monstrous gray wolf jumped onto their path, blocking them, almost as if it had been awaiting their arrival.
    Charlie remembered that before feeling fear, his first thought was, Why is there a wolf on the Isle? There are no wolves here. Yet here one was, lunging toward his father’s throat. They’d had but a second to react. 
    All Charlie could think to do was use his own body in defense and threw himself in front of his father. Even at sixteen, he was bulkier than his father was.
    Michael attempted to use magic to stop the wolf, but he wasn’t fast enough and the spell missed the lunging beast, hitting a nearby tree and shattering the branches. The wolf sank its teeth into Charlie’s shoulder, forcing them both to the ground. His father blasted the wolf with a strong spell, tearing it off his son’s body. Amongst the torn flesh and profuse bleeding, a tooth jutted out of Charlie’s skin. A souvenir he had put onto a chain and now wore around his neck.
    The wolf had run off into the woods, howling as it did so.
    Michael and his father had used what magic they could to stop the bleeding, but it didn’t help for long. They rushed him out of the woods and to the hospital. After a long night of tests, stitches and shots for fighting rabies, Charlie was allowed to return home.
    It wasn’t until a month later as the full moon approached, that they got confirmation that the wolf had really been something more than just a wolf.
    Months of research followed. 
    Their first thought was werewolf. However, no known cases of werewolves turning before the full moon had ever been documented, and it had looked like a regular wolf, just larger. Whereas a werewolf would have been much larger, and trim, yet