Anita was born in 1969 and at the start of the series she's 24. Her maternal grandmother, Grandmother Flores, is a vaudun priestess and was the first to teach Anita how to control her power. Anita is a necromancer, she has an affinity with the dead and had some strange childhood experiences (one being that her dead dog unexpectantly came back to life.) Her mother, who called Anita Niña, died in a car accident when she was eight, two years later her father married Judith. Judith had a daughter, Andria, a few years younger than Anita and later had a son, Josh. While most of family ignores her profession, Josh, a teenager, thinks she's cool. Although she was raised a Catholic, Anita switched over to Episcopalian when the Pope excommunicated all animators if they didn't stop raising the dead. Anita has a large collection of stuffed penguins. Sigmund's her #1 stuffed pal and when times are tough and everyone seems to be trying to kill her Anita cuddles up with him. She also keeps an aquarium full of large angelfish.

Before Anita even thought about being an animator, she went to college and graduated with a B.S. in Preternatural Biology, minoring in creatures of legend. Her intention was to become a sort of preternatural Jane Goodall, studying dragons or water monsters in the field. But Bert Vaughn, who's love money more than anything, came along and talked her into joining his company, Animator's, Inc. Since then she's been doing a steady business raising the dead. Whether it be to write or clarify a will, settle legal disputes or just come to terms with deceased relatives.

Anita makes her living as an animator but she is a necromancer. What's the difference? Animator's are just people who raise the dead, be they vaudun (voodoo) practitioners or necromancers (those with an affinity with the dead). Since necromancy is a rare talent most animators practice voodoo. Anita uses mostly vaudun techniques, taught to her by her mentor, Manny Rodriguez. With her increased powers it has become essential for her to learn true necromancy but as of yet she's just been learning to control it. When she started raising the dead for a living, she'd only raise 3 a night but due to her increasing powers she raises 5 a night and could probably do more. She also has the rare ability to act as a focus, combining the powers of another animator and her own. As her necromancer powers increase she finds that she's gaining new abilities. One is being able to meet most vampires, except the most powerful, in the eye without being hypnotized. Another new ability is that she's raised several vampires from their daytime sleep. Those vampires were Ellie Quinlan, Willie McCoy, Liv and Damian. She's now formed a connection with them, which rivals the link with their master. This bond gives her the power to heal and even save their life. She has a particully powerful bond with Damian.

In addition she's a vampire slayer. In fact, she has so many kills the vampires and everyone else call her The Executioner. Anita's job was a lot easier before vampires became legal citizens. Now all vampire executioners have to be officially licensed and they have to have an order of execution or a living will before stacking a vampire. Since a rogue vampire is likely to run, most vampire executioner are licensed in several states. But since there are only about ten executioners in the country they're stretched pretty thin. The fact that there's a law being discussed that would give executioners federal status may be a good thing and a bad thing. It would help Anita and other executioners follow rogue vampires who run beyond there territories, without having to deal with all the red tape. And it would give Anita a standing when dealing with cops, she could enter an investigation before too many people were killed (Anita's largest body count was 23, and in the 50's Gerald Mallory, the grandfather of the biz, killed a kiss of vampires - like a gaggle of geese - that took over 100 people). The drawback is that not all executioners are knowledgeable about all preternatural creatures and might do more harm than good.

She's also on retainer as a consultant with the Spook Squad. Although it takes a lot of her time and Bert's constantly giving her grief about missing her appointments, Anita loves working with Dolph, Zerbrowski and the rest of the team. She counts the men as her friends and is distressed by the rift between Dolph and herself after he found out about Jean-Claude.

For Anita, her weapons are as much a part of her as her curly hair. Her #1 weapon of choice is her Browning Hi-Power 9mm, which she wears in a shoulder holster. Her backup gun is a Firestar 9mm, which she usually wears in an Uncle Mike's sidekick inner-pants holster. In addition to these she has several styles of shotguns, which she uses instead of the traditional stake through the heart and Edward has given her a derringer and a mini-uzi, which is the ultimate vampire killer - cuts them in half). For the times when the bad guys have taken all guns, Anita's silver knives have saved her skin. She usually wears these in forearm sheaths but has been know to wear them anywhere that might go unnoticed. Her newest knife is nearly foot long, more a sword than a knife. She had a special harness made that fits along her spine with the hilt hiding under her hair.

When her life is in danger, Jean-Claude gives her the first mark. He then gives her the second mark, when his life is in danger. He gives her the third mark when another master vampire marks her. But these marks are eventually negated and Anita is thankful. Later when Anita, Jean-Claude and Richard form a triumvirate, she again allows herself to be give the first 3 marks in order to save Jean-Claude's and Richard's lives. Determined not to allow Jean-Claude to mark her the last time, immortality or not, Anita learns to deal with living with the marks. (more on vampire marks)

Anita's love life seems to be in as much chaos as the rest of her life. Anita has two men in her life, Jean-Claude, a vampire and Richard, the werewolf. She'd always kept Jean- Claude at arms length, but when Richard and her became serious, Jean-Claude threatened to kill Richard if he didn't get equal time to "woo" her. Seeing this as the only option, Anita agrees, but she does perfer Richard to Jean-Claude. The only thing stopping her from just marrying Richard is that she has to see him change into his beast. But when she sees him change it's during his fight for the pack leadership, where he not only changes right on top of her by eats his opponent. Anita can't handle this and turns to Jean-Claude. After sleeping with him, Richard, of course, can't forgive her. Richard distances himself from Anita, which effects the triumvirate's power. But when Richard's in trouble, Anita immediately drops everything to help him. Once they are together, they realize that no matter how much they don't want to love each other they do and finally conssumate their love. Now Anita's back where she started out, seeing both guys. Although at this point Anita needs a break from the guys and to learn how to control her powers, so everyone's celibate.

Everyone is surprised when Anita starts channeling Raina's munin. Anita's connection with Richard, as his lupa, and her necromancy opens her up to the lukoi's munin. Munin (meaning memory, named after Odin's raven) are the energy of the dead members of the pack. The pack feed on the dead, absorbing all of their energy and knowledge into the munin. Of course there are times when a pack member is lost or even excumunicated. The munin then can be channeled by certain members of the pack. For Anita, channeling Raina's munin allows her to heal, which was a talent Raina possessed. Although this is an awesome talent it comes at a great cost to Anita, Raina uses Anita's own prudishness towards anything sexual to push Anita into doing things she wouldn't normally do. So Anita must not only learn how to control Raina and the munin but she also has to become more comfortable about sexual situations. Because if she doesn't gain control the munin could drive Anita beyond the brink.

With everything else, Anita didn't really need any other responsibilities. But when she found out that because she'd killed Marcus the wereleopards were without any kind of protection or leadership she knew that she'd have to take care of them. The fact that Gabriel controlled the members or pard through sexual abuse, created a very disfunctional group. This is very difficult for Anita, who's not very comfortable around sexual situations. And the wereleopards ooze sexuality. With no one else to take over, Anita learns to overcome her prudishness and becomes the pard's Nimir-Ra, leopard queen.

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