Title: Harvest Moon
Author: Khylaren
Contact: khylaren@yahoo.com
Fandom: AB
Rating [NC17]
Warnings: explicit heterosexual and some homoerotic (slash) content
Beta: Alex
Spoilers: through Cerulean Sins

Disclaimer: Anita Blake and the characters of her universe belong solely to Laurell K. Hamilton. This story is written purely for entertainment and no money is being made from it. No infringement is intended. 

Summary:  Hip deep and sinking in were politics; I thought I had enough on my plate - what with raising the dead, feeding the ardeur, and trying to keep the men in my life happy.  Now I was helping a new wereleopard find her missing sister, and dealing with the news that Damian's old mistress, Morvoren, was planning on paying a visit to St. Louis. 

Oh…and trying to catch a killer.  

Author Notes:  This story stays as close to canon as I can manage up through Cerulean Sins.  After that, I’m off on my own story line, as in, Incubus Dreams and Danse Macabre have not happened. This means that Anita has not bound Nathaniel and Damian to her as her own triumvirate, nor has she gained power after power after power. 

I fell in love with this series through the first four books; I loved the mystery and suspense, the gritty feel of Anita’s world. I loved the romance too, but as later books came out, I felt that the story continually gave up the original aspects that made the series so appealing in favor of more and more sex scenes. I wanted to write a story that could combine both, but with more emphasis on Anita’s work, be it police-work, zombie raising, or vampire slaying. I’ll leave it up to the readers to decide if I succeeded. 

Chapter 1

The woman sitting across from me hadn't touched her coffee. She cradled it in her delicate looking hands, hunched over it like it was keeping her warm. Her hair was short, almost brutally so, but it suited her oval face and pointed chin. It was the color that somehow manages to be both red and brown at the same time. I wondered if it was natural.

"What can I do for you, Ms. Kelly?" I glanced down at the form in front of me as if I could glean more information from it than I already had. She'd filled in all the necessary blanks, except for any detail as to her reason for seeing me. Normally, I hate taking appointments without knowing why I'm seeing them; they're like blind dates and generally full of unpleasant surprises. I'd had enough surprises lately, both pleasant and unpleasant, to make me suspicious. Of course, everything made me suspicious. That's why I'm still alive. The only reason I hadn't thrown a fit about Ms. Kelly's lack of information is that we were having a slow month. 

She finally looked up from her coffee and met my eyes. They were a nice shade of brown with a hint of green in them. Perfectly normal. The power that spilled out from her was not. It took all of two seconds for me to identify what she was; a lycanthrope, and she had to be really distressed to be dumping that kind of energy all over me without noticing. 

"I need your help," she answered. Her voice was deeper than I expected, with a southern accent. I couldn't quite place it, but I was guessing deep south.

I eased my right hand down into my lap and out of sight, all the while maintaining eye contact. My gun was in my inner pants holster and I stopped moving once my hand was within easy drawing range. I'd drawn on clients before, and luckily never had to shoot any. But there's always a first time. 

"What kind of help do you think I can provide?" I asked as neutrally as possible. My skin was creeping with her energy, and I was tempted to tell her to tone it down. My experience, however, has taught me that sometimes mentioning such things to shape shifters can have a tendency to make it worse. I figured I'd give her a bit longer to calm down before I said anything. 

Her brown eyes filled with uncertainty and she licked her lips. "I was told you...you were the person I needed to see if I wanted to move into the area." Her accent was stronger, brought out by her emotions. 

Ah. Suddenly this was beginning to make sense. She knew of my involvement with the wolves and the leopards of St. Louis. I was Bolverk and Lupa for the Thronus Rokke clan, the local werewolf pack, though I wasn't exactly sure of my status anymore. Their Ulfric and I had been having personal issues lately. Understatement of the year. I was also the Nimir-Ra, the leopard queen, of the local pard. I'm not a wereleopard, but somehow I inherited the position when I killed the pard's old Alpha, Gabriel. It didn't seem to matter that I was human. Well, mostly human. I'm a necromancer, an animator, and the human servant of the Master of the City. And that's just the tip of the preternatural iceberg. I'd gotten to the point where I wasn't sure exactly what I was anymore.

I let my hand relax a bit, though I didn't move it away.

"That depends on a couple of things," I answered, resisting the urge to rub the goose bumps from my arms. "Do you think you can control yourself a bit more?"

"Oh! Sorry," she exclaimed, looking embarrassed. She took a deep breath, and the energy she'd been spilling all over the place receded just enough that it no longer made my skin crawl. "Better?"

I nodded and decided to be blunt. I was never really good at subtlety anyway. "What are you, cat or wolf?"

She smiled for the first time, and I noticed she had dimples. "Cat."

"What brought you here, Ms. Kelly?" If she was a troublemaker, I needed to know right away. I had enough troubles in my pard without adding new ones.

"Please, Ms. Blake, call me Savannah." She had calmed down enough to take a drink from her coffee, and she made an appreciative hum in her throat. That won her a brownie point from me. 

"Savannah, then. What brings you to St. Louis?"

"I'm looking for my sister, Louisa," she said, setting her coffee carefully on the edge of my desk and folding her small hands. She met my eyes, and I could see the worry in hers. "She disappeared over two months ago and I haven't heard a word from her. That's not like her at all."

"Is she...?" I trailed off, raising an eyebrow.

Savannah shook her head. "No. She's not, and that's why I'm worried."

"I'm afraid I don't understand."

She ran a hand through her short hair and sighed, giving me a faint smile. "This is hard."

I nodded. "Just tell me the truth. If I can help you, I will."

"Thank you, Ms. Blake. I appreciate that, more than you know."

If I was going to call her by her first name, it seemed rather silly to have her continue to call me by my last name. "Anita, please." It earned me another full-fledged smile. 

"Thank you. As I said, Louisa isn't like me. She's an engineer for a firm down in Mississippi. She's been there two years, and loves it."

"Does she know you're a lycanthrope?" It was fairly common for those in the lycanthrope community to hide what they were from others. 

Savannah nodded. "My family knows, Ms…Anita. It was kind of hard to hide it. Louisa was there when I was attacked."  My eyes must have shown what I was thinking. "Yes, it was bad. I nearly died from my injuries. If Daddy hadn't shown up and shot it, I think it would have killed me and Louisa."

"How did your family take it?" I asked gently, knowing firsthand what it was like to be suddenly different from everyone else in the family.

"Grateful, mostly. Scared, too. Daddy couldn't handle it and left, though I think that things between him and momma weren't real good at that point to begin with. I was the final straw." She bowed her head and continued. "Louisa still loved me, though I know she blames me for daddy leaving. And she was jealous too." She looked up at me, and her smile was a wry twist of lips that made her look cynical and older than I knew she was. "She'd always been the baby of the family. When the attack happened, I screamed at her to climb a tree as high as she could go and stay there. It saved her life, I'm sure, but after that, after I...survived...she was no longer the center of attention. Momma did what she could to get me help. She found the local pard and asked them to look after me. I couldn't go to school anymore, so I had a private tutor. Louisa hated that more than anything." Savannah glanced away, staring at the floor. "The kids at school were mean to her...she'd come home crying, and she wouldn't talk to me. Only momma could reach her."

I nodded, reaching for my coffee cup that said 'Disgruntled Employee of the Month' on the side. My boss, Bert, hadn't made me take it home yet. He was probably afraid of what I'd find to replace it. Sometimes he's smarter than he looks. 

"As we got older, we mended our fences, or so I thought," Savannah continued, meeting my eyes again. "We were close, after momma died, even closer. Daddy doesn't ever write or call. Last I heard he was living in Texas with another woman and her kids. He doesn't want anything to do with us, or me."  There was a wealth of bitterness in those last words. 

"Then what happened?" I prompted, giving her a moment to regain her composure.

"Louisa moved to Mississippi after she got her engineering degree and got a job there. She'd write or call, sometimes I'd come out and visit. Last letter I got from her said she was going to visit St. Louis, something about a man she'd met a couple of months ago. She never came back home. Her boss called me saying she hadn't come back to work. That was two months ago, and I haven't heard a word from her."  Savannah took a deep breath, running her hand through her hair again in a gesture that spoke of familiarity. "I don't know where to start, frankly, but I knew I had to see you first."

"Pard politics," I said in agreement. "Not that I would have busted your ass for coming here - as long as you stayed out of trouble."

She shook her head. "It's not just politics that made me search you out. I was hoping...well I was hoping you could help me find my sister."

"I'm not a detective, Savannah. I'm a Federal Marshal, a licensed vampire executioner, and an animator."

Savannah gave me a look so direct I almost squirmed in my chair. Almost.

"You're also Nimir-Ra for the Blooddrinker's clan, and you have contacts with the wolves and the vampires of this city."

I nodded and shrugged. "So? What does that have to do with anything? She's not a shifter, she's not a vampire. Why not just go to the police?" I felt her energy again, as if her distress at my question weakened her ability to control it. I had a bad feeling, but I had to ask. "Why do I get the idea that this is something you don't want the police to know about?"

She looked hopeless, lost for a moment, and then sighed deeply. "Because it doesn't involve them. I don't think my sister is human anymore."