[3] Anita Blake is a petite woman of mixed German and Mexican heritage with curly long raven hair and pale skin with scars scattered over her body.
During the events in First Death she met the vampire hunter Edward and received several of her scars, which includes a cross-shaped brand on her arm.
In the first novel (Guilty Pleasures) Anita receives her first marks from the vampire Jean-Claude and begins to gain advanced healing powers and abilities.
By the end of the book she has become instrumental in removing the previous Master Vampire of the City Nikolaos from power by killing her and has received two of the four marks necessary to become Jean-Claude's Human Servant.
In the third novel (Circus of the Damned) Anita meets high school science teacher and closet werewolf Richard Zeeman and begins dating him.
In (Narcissus in Chains) the damage done to her friends and allies from the closing off of the marks is further shown, with Damian having become a feral killing machine in her absence, confirming that he is her vampire servant.
During this book Anita also contracts several strains of lycanthropy after being injured by a wereleopard and Chimera, the split personality of Orlando King, a lycanthrope hunter.
This power causes the official end of Anita's relationship with Richard after she is forced to feed off of him, although she still serves as the lupa and punisher of the St. Louis wolf pack.
She has started a complex romantic and sexual relationship with Jean-Claude, Micah and Nathaniel, who she has begun to use as a source of food for the ardeur.
Her closeness with the supernatural world causes issues with her job as a U.S. Marshall, with Lt. Rudolph "Dolph" Storr expressing extreme disapproval of her romantic and sexual choices and attempting to have one of her lovers, Jason, imprisoned for being a shapeshifter.
It is during this time that the leader of the were-lion group, Joseph, refuses to have sex with Anita since he is married; this leads to his exile and potential death.
Blake's troubles with Marmee Noir continue in Skin Trade in which she is also attacked by the ancient vampire Vittorio, who attempts and fails to make her his Human Servant.
At the end of Skin Trade Marmee Noir's body was destroyed, however in Bullet her spirit returns to attack Anita and the Vampire Council.
Blake's ongoing relationships become even more complicated by the end of Kiss the Dead, as one of the were-tigers she had sex with in Skin Trade (Cynric) has moved to St. Louis to be with her, but is still only seventeen at the beginning of the novel.
During the events in Affliction Blake also gains the ability to call hyenas after she was forced to shoot one of her were-hyena guards while he was being controlled by the Lover of Death, who was previously thought to be dead.