Night Life by Caitlin Kittredge

Luna Wilder is a cop, and a good one, but she also has the problem of being a werewolf. And worse, an Insoli werewolf, which means she goes without the support or help of a pack. But Luna wouldn't have it any other way, since the man that turned her raped her before he bit her, and she was able to take him offguard and run for her life... quite literally, in this case.

Now, Luna lives apart from her family, which is composed of Moon Witches, those who get their powers from moonlight and the earth, not blood, sex or demons. The only one who she gets along with is her sister, Sunny. Sunny has been trying to cure Luna of her werewolfism, or failing that, to mitigate the effects of the full moon. One of their projects is the tattoo on Luna's back, which blunts the harmful effects Luna normally experiences as the full moon approaches.

When Luna is called to the scene of a dead dancer, she begins to suspect that something isn't right about the case. And then she finds another dead girl, killed in exactly the same way, in a bedroom in the seedy part of the town. It seems that the son of the local DA, who was found with the second girl, may be the one killing girls. But the cases have similarities to the killings of a black magic practitioner who was trying to summon and control a demon back in the 70's. And his crimes had links to another serial killer who operated during the 1930's.

Luna has her own liking for one of the suspects, the boyfriend of the first murdered girl she investigated, Dimitri Sandovsky, a Redback werewolf. But her belief that he might be the one killing the girls soon takes a back seat to her hormones going into overdrive when he's around, and she has to face the fact that the man she might be falling for might also be a serial killer harboring secret black magic rituals for invoking Asmodeus, a fallen demon who is still trapped between the worlds.

But if he isn't the killer, she just might need his help to defeat the real killer, since because of her interference in the case, Luna is now at the top of the list for the very last sacrifice... the one that brings the demon to earth and binds him to the summoner. Can Luna save herself and Dimitri's sister Olga from a man who only cares about summoning a demon?

And, yet another book about a kick-ass werewolf/vampire/fill-in-the-blank-here who pushes people away from her, gets called a bitch and ends up having hot, hot sex with a hunk-ahunk-a hot guy and yet ends up saving the day, not to mention her job. Yeah, that's what this book could have turned into, but I found the plight of Luna, the outcast werewolf, to be a bit more compelling than the usual run of the mill "Hot supa-naturel action grrrl".

Perhaps it was that she had to figure out everything on her own, and I do mean *everything* about being a werewolf. Or the way she actually accepts help. No, more than that... asks for help, and mostly without being a bitch about it. It was a nice change from the "I can do everything myself without needing anyone's help" gals that seem to be so present in the genre. Or maybe it's the city itself, which is almost as big a character in the story as some of the side characters, even though it is also given a standard Post-apocalyptic/magical castastrophe background.

In any case, although the larger set-pieces have been done before (and some might say overdone), I actually liked the story and seeing Luna's growth and slow falling for Dimitri. Her interactions with the CSU geek were also nice and non-stereotypical, as is Luna's relationship with Sunny, her sister. So, while this novel could have been an entirely "been there, read that 100 times before" type book, this ended up being more than the sum of its parts, and I enjoyed it for that.