By The Light of the White Moon

Chapter One

This poor cop. He was trying to sign questions to me because he was told I was deaf. What he didn't know was if he spoke I could read the question from his mind and I didn't say anything because it was just too damn funny watching him.

Dude, Katra. Just tell him already I'm about to burst!

I looked over to Jazz who was trying to keep the smile off her face and smiled.

Jazz was my best friend out of my three sisters. Her short black hair was spiked. Thick blue eyeliner outlined her lavender eyes and deep red lipstick made her lips stand out from her tanned oval face. She was wearing her usual black corset with blue notes decorating it and blue garter belt with black stockings. She had long since put up the blue pumps that finished the outfit saying if we're not going to dance then I'm not wearing these uncomfortable things.

"You guys sure you don't know any sign language?" the cop asked my sisters.

That was it for Jazz. Tears burst from her eyes; she toppled backwards off of the plush red cushion she was sitting on and lay on the floor laughing.

The cop shifted angry eyes to her, "What the hell is your problem?"

I had to place a hand over my mouth to stifle my own laughter until I could say, "I'm sorry." As soon as I spoke he turned those dagger eyes to me. Another fit of laughter tried to take over me as I struggled to speak, "It's true I can't hear but..," I cleared my throat trying to get serious, "Well just speak and I'll answer." I changed my mind about telling him I could read his mind. That's something the cops don't need to know.

It took quite a bit of control to not react to the line of vulgar words that went through his mind. I was surprised when actually asked the question on the tip of his tongue, "If you could answer my questions then why did you let me make a fool of myself?"

I couldn't help but smile and say, "It was too fucking funny to pass up."

Katra quit being a pain in the ass.

"Oh shit."

"Tell me about it."

I looked over to my sister Phoenix, "You see him too."

She didn't even look my direction as she gave a slight nod.

Phoenix is the oldest out of us quadruplets. Her normally shoulder length fiery red hair was tucked into a curly black wig. Her left green eye was outlined in red eyeliner and black eye shadow. Her full pouting lips were a nice hot pink. She wore a red halter top with pink straps and black mesh. The mini skirt was red, pink, and black plaid. Thigh high black boots and an eye patch over the scar that used to be her right eye finished off her look for the night.

Richard Johnson continued his angry beady eyed stare as he weaved through the tables of the club to us.

Richard was one of the few friends we had in the Police Force. He was the tallest man I've ever known at six foot seven. He was ripped and barely fit into his light brown uniform. We all used to go to the gym and work out together until he found out we worked at Diamond Babies. It wasn't like we were trying to make him think less of us; we were just trying to piss our mom off enough so she'd leave us alone.

Richard worked out so much that his arms barely crossed his chest as he said, "Katra quit being a pain."

Jazz sat up and peered over the cushion' "Don't you mean pain in the ass?"

"You know he doesn't cuss on the job," said Melusine motioning quotations with her hands to emphasize 'job'.

Melusine was the youngest of the four of us. She had ankle length hair that looked like waves across the ocean. When the wind blew her hair looks like the ocean rippling. Her now sapphire blue eyes changed colors according to her mood. From baby blue when she's happy to an almost black blue like the color of a stormy ocean when she's mad. For her show tonight she was wearing a long elegant see-through glittery light blue dress with dark blue pasties and thong underneath. She wore no shoes so the dress pooled around her feet.

"Anyway," Richard said getting the attention back on him, "What I want to know is why I find you at yet another crime scene."

"Oh, Richie. You know everyone's jealous of us," said Jazz with a smile.

Giving Richard a hard time was her favorite thing to do. Well, not just Richard but everyone. I guess that's why we both got along so well.

"Now why would anyone be jealous of a woman working in a strip club?"

"First off, it's a gentlemen's club. Two, it's because not a lot of women have the courage to do what we do. And three, you know we're not doing it to make you mad," said Phoenix trying to explain once again the three things Richard will never get. The girl just doesn't give up.

"Whatever," he sighed and continued, "Lets get down to business. You obviously know the victim," he looked down at his note pad, "Jessica Sims, or Clover as she was known on stage."

"We knew of her but we really didn't know know her. By the way can I ask a question?" I asked being really serious because I was starting to get really concerned.

This was the third of three connected crime scenes we were at. Richard probably was putting us in his suspects list but the four of us were thinking we're going to be the ending targets in all of this.

With the four of us being exotic dancers we've had the usual threatening letters from church goers and husband's wives and stalkers. But no one had ever gone to the extreme of killing people we barely knew around us.

"You're going to ask anyway, so go ahead and ask."

"Was the knife made out of silver?"

The four of us were the ones that found her. Phoenix and Jazz were going to smoke before the show started and as usual Melusine and I followed so we could talk. We got out the back door and Phoenix lit her Zippo to light her cigarette. We saw a flash of something by the dumpster and of coarse went to check it out. It was Jessica lying on the ground in her green strapless bra and see-through light green halter top. Her underwear was missing but she still had her black garter belt and green stockings on. There was blood covering her right side from the hilt of a knife sticking out of her neck and her legs were taped together. Melusine and Phoenix ran inside as Jazz and I stood there trying to control ourselves around the smell of blood.

Richard and the other cop who hadn't left yet basically stared me down like I was the bad kid at a party who just popped all the balloons.

"Now why would you need to know that?" Richard asked looking back and forth between the four of us.

"Jessica was supposed to be guarding us tonight. She's one of the new cougars that came into town about a week ago so she naturally goes guard duty," Phoenix explained, "Now that someone has killed yet another one of our guards I think we ought to know. I mean we are the ones in danger here and we have cooperated fully. We could have called diplomatic immunity here but we care about our people and want to keep them safe."

Wereanimals had become so few from being hunted that we all united as one pack. Our mother, Queen Nivea, was crowned when she had the four of us. It is said she was chosen because she had two children of two different animals and two children of opposite elements water and fire. Since there are so few of us left the country has decided we are not to be hunted except under legal purposes by a special hunting unit. We were also given the right to be our own diplomatic system and so have the right for diplomatic immunity.

He sighed and said, "Erickson tell them the details."

Officer Erickson flipped a couple of pages back in his notebook and began to read, "The knife was sent in for testing and it was found to be made of pure silver and the hilt was made out of pure onyx. We untapped her legs and found there was a knife, similar to the one found in the neck, between her legs. The hypothesis is that someone raped her and then stabbed her to try and cover up the rape." When he was done reading he looked like he was going to be sick; like he was seeing the whole scene again.

"Go get a drink and relax Erickson."

"I'm fine sir," he said trying to act tough.

Richard turned to him, "It's not a request Erickson. Go now."

After a minute or so of Richard and Erickson staring at each other Erickson finally went over and sat down at the bar.

"How new is he?" asked Jazz.

"Sad thing is he's been on the force for two years already. He was sent over to me because of that exact attitude."

"Who would do that to her?" Melusine asked but it seemed she more asked herself than anyone else.

"I was hoping one of you would know."

"Trust me if we knew they would either be in your hands or dead," said Phoenix looking him straight in the eye.

After we finished answering questions and getting dressed in more formal clothes we headed down to the Passage to meet our 'boyfriends'.

The Passage was an old mining shaft down by the beach. Our mother used it to test the loyalty of new were-animals who wanted to join our pack. It was also a tradition to use the sandy beach for birthing, but since most of us couldn't keep the child for long it was rarely used for that. Tonight we were testing two females and two males, but that was after some type of meeting our mother wanted.

The three boys for my sisters were standing by the mouth of the shaft talking and smoking. Darius was standing bare foot in the tide with my black cat, Orpheus, on his shoulder.

Darius, Jason, Damien, and Cristoph were vampires who were hired to be bodyguards and the occasional assassin. Since we helped them during the day when they couldn't come out, they helped us by being our fake boyfriends when we needed them. If it wasn't for them the four of us would be drowning in random men sent by Nivea.

I removed the four inch stilettos I was wearing, hiked up my dress over my arm, and joined Darius and Orpheus.

"Well don't you look sexy," he said turning to watch me walk toward him.

I smiled and said, "You should have seen me in my work outfit."

At one point I had wanted so badly to date Darius because he was so sweet and funny. I was actually about to ask him out when I found out from another woman that that was how he got her to sleep with him and then just before dawn he picked her up and dumped her on the floor outside the front door. From then on I've strictly put him in the friend category no matter how much he flirts.

He smiled wide enough to flash his fangs and said, "You should wear it to my house sometime."

I couldn't help but laugh, "You wish. By the way you don't look too bad yourself."

Darius and I had planned to match but I was hoping he'd look bad in hot pink. As usual with him and clothes, I was completely wrong.

His long usually curly black hair was permed straight and pulled back into a ponytail, which showed off his soft triangular face. He wore a little bit of black eyeliner to make his beautiful almond lavender eyes stand out. If you followed his perfect nose structure it led you straight to his perfect lips that just demanded a rough, hot, lustful kiss. The top three buttons of his hot pink dress shirt was left unbuttoned so you could see just a hint of curly chest hair on his slightly chiseled chest. His black dress pants were rolled up to his knees so not to get them wet and his dress shoes were up higher on the beach. He looked so good that it made me kind of shameful of the long pink halter dress I was wearing.

"You know I really do miss this," he said looking wistfully out to the sea.

Before becoming a vampire, Darius was a twenty-five year old swimmer aspiring to be in the Olympics. His dreams were cut short when he ran into a vampire named Marlene. She tricked him into exchanging blood, which he thought was the beginning to some kinky sex. Even after exchanging blood he got no sex and was left to endure the pain of becoming a vampire all alone. It made him a little jaded and hard to deal with sometimes but I could never say anything or blame him. I mean if something like that happened to me I'd probably be the same way.

I grabbed his hand and held it, "What do you say we ruin these beautiful clothes by going swimming after this?"

He put his other arm around my waist and pulled me against him, "What do you say to swimming with no clothes?"

I slapped his chest as he smiled wickedly, "You are an incorrigible perv!"

I pushed him back and started walk back to where everyone else was. I didn't even have to look back to see if he was following me, the loud unpleasant thoughts let me know he was.

You know you must be mental to even consider being around this guy.

I looked down at Orpheus walking beside me, "Coming from the one who hangs out with him all the time."

Hey it helps me meet female cats. He uses me to pick up women and I use him to get to the females inside their houses. It's a fair trade.

"Men are all the same," I sighed.

We met up with the other six who were also matching their partner; Jazz and Damien in light purple, Phoenix and Jason in pale yellow, and Melusine and Cristoph in electric blue.

"You two finished already. Darius, man, I thought you said you could go for eight hours," Jason teased.

"Shut the fuck up Jason," he walked up and was just a couple of inches away from Jason's face, "I think it's about time we get inside."

Jason laughed and put a hand on his shoulder, "Alright tough guy. Let's go."

Darius' eyes would have lit on fire if they could he was so mad.

"Come on Darius," I said placing a hand on his arm, "We can do this later."

He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, "Alright, lets get this over with."