"Hey, we've got a call today, some guy claims he saw a werewolf running down the street on all four. Our forensic artist drew this," Nick pulled a folded piece of paper from his breast pocket and gave it to Monroe, who immediately spread it out.
It turned out to be a pencil sketch of a humanoid creature with enormous, scary looking fangs, excessive sideburns, and no eyebrows. It's features were frozen in a deranged expression of pure rage. There also was drool at the side of its mouth. Or was it actually meant to depict foam? Hmm… Frowning, Monroe brought the paper closer to his eyes.
Nick decided to take continuing silence as an affirmative answer. "So, I take it, our witness isn't just an overstressed neurotic with an active imagination."
"Um? Oh, no, he is right."
"As in... he really saw a werewolf?" Nick exclaimed somewhat incredulously. "I didn't know there are other wolf-like wesen."
Momentarily glancing up from the picture, Monroe distractedly mumbled, "There aren't. They're on a different branch of the evolutionary tree," and went back to staring at the sketch not a second later.
Nick made a point of not letting his gradually rising annoyance show in his voice. "Let me get this straight. You are telling me that not only werewolves exist, and that they are not wesen, but actual werewolves like those in the movies? Seriously? Why didn't you tell me about it sooner?"
"Well… First of all, it's pronounced Werwolf and Werwölfe in the plural; secondly, yes, they are real; and thirdly, we usually don't talk about them. As in at all and not ever. It's considered vulgar, to even mention them in polite society is unseemly. Why, there was that one time when I was a kid, I asked my great-great-great aunt something about them on a dare. I thought the old hag was going to go into cardiac arrest or something, she is so melodramatic." He sighed exasperatedly, looking skywards.
"And man, is she pompous… Oh, trust me, you can't imagine even a half of the lecture I had to suffer through! It contained words such as "preposterous", "unbecoming", "proper Blutbad", and "scandalous". He made air-quotes in appropriate places and completed the sentence with an eye roll. "But back to the topic. You see, they're not technically wesen, more like something in between us and humans. We shared a common ancestor somewhere along the way a very long time ago, but… Look, it's similar to 'apes and humans' situation, ok?
'And we don't talk about our possible kinship with them either. They even can't woge half-way, so that only other wesen, or grimm, obviously, can see their real form, oh, no! With Werwölfe it's either full (or partial, but still visible) transformation or none at all! They're seen as an embarrassment in wesen community and let me tell you, was my aunt right! You really can't bring them up in a conversation without getting weird and often contemptuous glares. It's like with that creepy relative everyone has, but doesn't talk about, who shows up at every major family or clan gathering, gets drunk and tries to eat one of your guests…" he slowly trailed off under Nick's sceptical gaze. "Ahem. Well, maybe you don't have one of those. Um."
"Yeah, relax, I get the idea." Nick smirked, but then his countenance turned serious. "More important right now is that we have a dangerous, potentially bloodthirsty and/or uncontrollable creature, which can turn anyone into a similar creature with a bite, running through the streets of Portland. Great, just great."
