Red-Haired Stepwolves

Werewolves. They are the red-haired step children of the horror genre. It’s not that they aren’t an integral element of many horror stories, but rather they are rarely the lead. No doubt one of my three readers (I picked up one yesterday) will now correct me, citing an urban fantasy novel with a bare-chested werewolf (can they really be bare-chested?) on the cover. Obscure urban-fantasy citing aside, however, you’ll rarely find a novel, movie or game about werewolves or told from the werewolf’s point of view. Furthermore, although vampires might be evil, amoral, ruthless bloodsuckers, they are also frequently depicted as cultured, or at least crafty. On the other hand, werewolves are written as instinct-driven, savage beasts.

For example, Underworld’s Lucian is portrayed as an intelligent, cunning crusader, but his followers are little more than “a pack of dogs,” as Lucian himself states. And the werewolves in Van Helsing, without debate some of the best renditions of the beasts I’ve seen, would lose Jeopardy to a pack of frozen food.

I wanted to change that in that Strange-World-War-III-Book-That-Also-Has-Creepy-Stuff. My werewolves are intelligent beings. Lycans by night to be sure, but men and woman with lives by day. I thought long and hard on how werewolves might have survived through the centuries and remained hidden from civilization’s eyes. My answer was a clan system. One that is based on either Europe’s gypsies or North America’s Indians. My werewolves don’t kill for the sake of killing, don’t change into blood-thirsty beasts with the full moon, and aren’t evil. Neither, however, are they good. Each is different. Some clans stay hidden from humans, living in isolation in the forest. Mike Hudson—the story’s main protagonist, battles one such family—other clans live among humans, striving to integrate with us. The Russian paratroopers that assault Tanenhause encounter such a clan.

Werewolves are not the main problem in that Strange-World-War-III-Book-That-Also-Has-Creepy-Stuff, war is. Nevertheless, they are a significant element. Way more than red-haired step children.