In Anitaverse, when someone mentions federal marshals, the usually mean the preternatural branch of U.S. Marshals Service.
Marshal status allows vampire executioners to operate across state lines, and affords them more freedom to perform their duty, although in return there is some more bureaucracy, and the laws keep changing on them. Marshals of the preternatural branch never have official partners, although they often work closely together with other law enforcement in their area. Most marshals kill at least one vampire in their first month in the field, sometimes more, which is more violence than most regular cops deal out in their whole career.
Becoming a marshal
The original marshals of the preternatural branch are old-time vampire executioners like Anita, or bounty hunters like Ted Forrester, who get grandfathered in after qualifying on a shooting range if they have two or more years on the job. Those who don't qualify, or have retired from active duty like Manny, continue as they were without a marshal status and a badge.
Newer vampire executioners, like Larry Kirkland, who were not established yet at the time of original grandfathering, have much stricter entry requirements to becoming marshals, but are still largely trained to the job outside of any official channels, like Anita training Larry.
Third wave of marshals are people who have been regular police officers for at least two years and then trained for preternatural work in classrooms instead of in the field. Anita disapproves of this, because these marshals tend to lack the skillsets required for becoming effective legalized assassins for monsters. The training meets political needs rather than actual demands of the job, and the new marshals tend to be woefully unaware of how far the classroom theory is from the practice.
Lycanthropy
Initially, lycanthropy is automatic means of dismissal for marshals of the preternatural branch, just as it is for other members of law enforcement. However, Anita becomes the first to be allowed to stay after testing positive, because she doesn't shift.
At the time of Hit List a marshal who lost his badge after catching lycanthropy is involved in a court case worth millions over it, and wins the case by the epilogue. This allows Marshal Laila Karlton, who is infected by a werewolf during the Hit List, to become the first actual lycanthrope to keep her badge after she shifts for the first time. Marshal Otto Jefferies, who becomes a werelion shortly after Laila's attack, technically gets the same deal, although he is considered too dangerous to be left to his own devices.
As of Kiss the Dead Marshal Karlton is still riding a desk, but if she ever gets allowed back to the field it will open the door for other lycanthropes to apply as well.
By the time of Dead Ice there are still only two officers who have got to keep their badges after catching lycanthropy, both of them members of the preternatural branch. It's unclear whether Otto Jefferies is counted as one of the two. He isn't mentioned in that context in Kiss the Dead, which might indicate that he isn't considered an active marshal anymore, and that some other marshal has caught lycanthropy and kept their badge in the meantime.
Known marshals
Preternatural branch
Grandfathered
- Anita Blake - St. Louis, Missouri.
- Denis-Luc St. John - New Orleans, Louisiana.
- Gerald Mallory - Washington, DC.
- John Burke - St. Louis, Missouri.
- Otto Jeffries a.k.a. Olaf - unknown
- Theodore "Ted" Forrester a.k.a. Edward - Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Applied during transition phase
- Larry Kirkland - St. Louis, Missouri.
Classroom trained
- Arlen Brice - St. Louis, Missouri.
- Laila Karlton - unknown
- Morgan - Atlanta, Georgia. (Deceased)
- Newman - unknown
- Tilford - unknown
Unknown training
- Tony a.k.a. Wizard - Las Vegas, Navada. (Deceased)
Other marshal branches
- Finnegan - Atlanta, Georgia.
- Raborn - Seattle, Washington.
- Rita Clark - Seattle, Washington.
Unknown marshal branch
- Ben Carter - unknown