Richard Zeeman

"Smart, handsome, junior high science teacher, degree in preternatural biology, what more could I ask for?  Give me a minute and I'd think of something."

- Anita Blake, Circus of the Damned

(before finding out Richard is a werewolf.)

Richard Alaric Zeeman is introduced in Circus of the Damned.  He is a werewolf who can pass for human, even to Anita.  He is the only wolf that had been able to fool Anita into thinking he was human for a length of time.

He had become a werewolf after receiving a bad shot of the vaccine.

In his "other life" he is a science teacher at Seckman Junior High School.  Were they to know that he is a werewolf he would lose his job there.  He has lots of normal hobbies, like scuba diving, caving, bird watching, gardening and astronomy.  He tries as much as he can to distance himself from the fact that he is a werewolf, but he cannot run from himself.

The only member of his family to know that he is a werewolf is his younger brother Daniel, although like all secrets his family find out eventually.

Like Anita he has a degree in preternatural biology.  Also like Anita he is scared of airplanes.  Unlike Anita he is also scared of guns, large predators and master vampires.  Something not very hopeful for the survival of the werewolf.

He is friends with Stephen, another werewolf in the local pack.  In the Lunatic Café he goes to far as to forbid any lower member of the pack to contact Anita.

When Anita first meets him he is next in line for pack leader.  He is an Alpha Male and he is able to meet Jean-Claude's eyes.  He is also powerful enough to partially change form at will, a rare talent shared only by Marcus and Raina at the time it is revealed.

Richard sees himself as a monster because he enjoys the fight and is scared he will enjoy killing too.  He believes that Anita sees him as a monster and believes that that is why she will not sleep with him.

Richard can feed his power through blood.  In the Killing Dance he was marked by Jean-Claude so that he can draw on power to enable him to kill Marcus.

After killing Marcus, and eating him, Anita is scared off and runs to Jean-Claude.  Things tend to go downhill for Richard, the new Ulfric of the pack, from that point on.  When he finds out that she has slept with Jean-Claude he breaks up with her.

Richard has the virtues of a boy scout and hates his beast.  He tries to convince himself that he hates Anita.

We then start to see another side to Richard. 

In searching for a replacement for Anita we find that Richard has been sleeping with a number of women out of the area.  He also judges Anita by his own standards and is prepared to think the worst of her and assumes that she is sleeping with Jason.

After Richard and Anita sleep together he tells her that for as long as she is seeing Jean-Claude he will continue to see other people too.

He even shows cruelty in his treatment of others less powerful than himself.  He hits Cherry to try to force her to return with Zane to Padma for Vivian and Gregory, although he relents later.

His is torn between his own virtues and what he needs to do to survive in the pack.  He cannot seem to find the right balance and goes from trying to run the pack like a democracy, leaving it open to attack from within like when Jacob tried to secure the pack for Chimera, to trying to take control through ruthlessness.

Richard is also reckless as well as ruthless when he arrives late to the Banquet in Cerulean Sins he chooses this dreadful time to try and take the wolves back from Jean-Claude.  Something which even the rest of the pack so not approve of at such a time.  Sylvie challenges him and fails when she does not want him to do this at such a time and is seriously injured.  Even Shang-Da does not approve of the timing.

Anita also finds that when Richard is angry he can be very nasty and she describes him as more hateful than anyone she had ever dated.  When his refuses to let his wolves help out when there is a real danger she wonders how long it will be before she hates him.

Text in this colour denotes that it is a spoiler for Incubus Dreams

In Incubus Dreams Richard makes his comeback and arrives in time to save the day when Damian goes mad after he wakes to find himself in the sunlight after the fourth mark of the triumvirate.

Richard is shown to be a bad judge when he arrives with his new girlfriend who is also a new werewolf and has been brought out in public, instead of staying at a safe house, at a time dangerously close to the full moon.

Richard and Anita finally have the long overdue talk about their relationship and he reveals that he had thought that Anita was sleeping with Nathaniel for some time.  He finally realises that she wasn't and looks about to start re-assessing his own relationship choices.

Of course Richard is still straight-laced enough to be shocked when he finds Anita with Nathaniel and Jason in their animal forms.  He attacks Jason but is calmed enough before he does serious damage to all of them.

Once he has gotten over the shock and his temper he reveals to Anita that his relationship with girlfriend Clair is over as she had told him in a fight that he was too rough with her.  Through their connection Anita had seen some of the fight and had heard Clair's use of the word monster. 

With Clair out of the picture Richard and Anita finally talk and Richard seems to be ready to make a start on accepting the beast that is in him. 

Despite his dislike of Jean-Claude and the fact that he does not like men touching him Richard agrees with the others that they should try to become a proper triumvirate.  

Finally it seems that Richard might become a power to be reckoned with and he was certainly a lot less whiney in this book than he has been previously.  It would seem that he has finally stopped running from himself and can move on. 

"I realised in that moment that Richard was still living in that other world.  The world where people played fair and horrible things never really happened.  It must have been a peaceful place to live, the planet that people like Richard called home.  I'd always admired the view, but I'd never lived there.  The trouble was that Richard didn't live there either."

- Anita Blake, Cerulean Sins