Loved

Check out our episode here! (features Loved, Lost and Forgotten) Loved by PC Cast and Kristin Cast

It’s been less than a year since everything that took place in the original House of Night series. It’s the day before Zoey’s birthmas and Kalona visits her in her dreams, which is very reminiscent of a dream from the original series where he tried to get her to take over the vampyre world with him. They talk of his wings being white now that he's back with Nyx in her realm, and he’s like, oh yeah, they’re white, which is odd. He is visiting because he senses something bad coming and wanted to warn her even though Nyx told him not to. Also odd. He tells her to read Neferet's journal, which she buried in Tulsa 1893 but recently moved to the high priestess chamber. Hey, that’s Zoey’s room because she's the high priestess now! And the leader of the American High Council! Kalona wants her to alert her circle even though they're not together anymore. When Kalona left, his shadow changed into the outline of the white bull, but Zoey didn’t notice it.

When she wakes up, she has sexy times with Stark, then they find the journal. Soon after, Aphrodite and Kramisha show up because Kramisha received a poem from Nyx, which is connected to what’s about to happen, as it always is, but of course they don’t realize it right away. Also, surprise! The nerd herd is coming to visit for Zoey's birthday! That’s good because as Kalona said, she needs to gather her circle. At breakfast, Zoey starts reading Emily Wheeler’s journal, aka Neferet's Curse. It mentions the white bull in the first entry and so they pity Neferet, she was dealing with Darkness back when she was a young human girl! After breakfast, she, Aphrodite, Stark and Darius plan to go to check on Neferet's grotto.

When they arrive in the park, there is a press conference. Aphrodite's mother is running for mayor! She wants to kick the vampyres out and Make Tulsa Strong Again and we all vomit everywhere. When the reporters ask her why she wants to do this, because the vampyres are helping Tulsa, she ends the interview, surprisingly not calling the reporter who asked that question a racist name or doing something else ignorant. They continue on to the grotto where they find gardeners working and complaining about all the roses being stolen that afternoon and replaced with black ones. Um, that’s not possible. No way could someone have stolen and replaced all the roses in one afternoon. Aphrodite examines them and sees that they are made of Darkness. Then she has a vision through Damien's eyes. They are in the grotto and have cast a circle. In the middle of the circle, disgusting red vampyre zombie creatures are crawling out of a hole in the ground. One of them is Jack (who you will remember died in the original series). He approaches Damien and eats out his throat. Uh… Yikes?

The Nerd Herd arrives. Yay! They don’t all seem happy with where they are in the US now, Stevie Rae and Rephaim in Chicago, Damien in New York, Shaunee in New Orleans and Shaylin in San Francisco. Well, Shaunee and Shaylin are pretty content, but the others are homesick. They have a council meeting with the Nerd Herd, and also Nicole, Erik Night and Lenobia, to explain everything — Zoey’s Kalona dream, Kramisha’s poem and Aphrodite’s vision. Rephaim said Kalona has never visited him in a dream from a bad place from their past because he is striving to be good now that he’s back at Nyx’s side, but that he would ask Kalona if he visited Zoey. Then Aphrodite tells her grisly vision. Damien decides Neferet is influencing the mortal world, so they decide to create a protection spell around her grotto. To prepare, they study Neferet's journal and several spell books in the school's library.

Zoey decides none of the spells they found will be good enough, so Grandma Redbird, who arrived shortly after they started their research, suggests that she needs to create her own spell. She asks each of her friends to find an item that represents their element and bring it to the circle casting to strengthen it. They decide that Aphrodite should stand in for Damien so, just in case zombie red creatures do come out, he won't be there to be eaten. The circle is almost finished when Aphrodite's mom shows up in the park. As Zoey finishes her part of the spell and cuts a pentagram into the air with an athame, she thinks, I need to be focused, but wouldn't it be great if red zombies did show up and eat Aphrodite's mom?, then she gets startled and cuts herself, then the red zombies come. Aphrodite's mom refuses to leave and makes the reporters who are with her film the chaos. Luckily, the warriors fight off the red zombies and everyone is able to escape. The zombies that weren't taken down decided to split up and spread throughout town. One looked familiar, like Zoey’s little brother, but no way. Only one remained: Jack. Damien calls for him, but he is confused. He started to attack Darius, but Aphrodite tases him before he does. They gather him up and leave the park. Aphrodite realizes the vision she got wasn't about Damien dying, it was about her dying, and was way worse than she realized.

General Dominic of the Red Army leads the red zombies away, but they go back to the park after Zoey and her group leave. They need to feed, so they eat the reporters that came back to retrieve their equipment. Delicious! Then they have to figure out where their high priestess is, and where they are, because this Tulsa isn't right. And Neferet is nowhere to be seen. The general's second in command, Hef, has trouble following orders because he just saw his sister, his dead sister, close the circle in the park and flee. Hef is Kevin Heffer, Zoey's younger brother. In his world, Zoey was beheaded and staked outside of the House of Night, and that same night, he was Marked and gifted by Nyx. He, unlike other reds, has kept his memories and his humanity.

On their way back to the school, Jack wakes up. He is freaking out. He asks where High Priestess Neferet is. He says Damien is dead, he killed himself six months and two days ago. He calls Stark General and the rest of them Rebels. He says he can't be at the school and needs to be where the Red Army is, in the depot tunnels. Uh oh. Is that where all the others went? There's going to be a lot of dead people very soon if so. And yes, that's exactly what happened. The all-night restaurant at the depot had an all you can eat human and fledgling special. Zoey calls Detective Marx to get some cops to go to the depot and then closes and locks the school. Darius and the Sons of Erebus warriors are sent out with the police to protect the city.

The Nerd Herd goes to check on Jack. They learn that the House of Night he comes from is a stronghold for Neferet's blue vampyre army led by General Stark and the depot is the red army stronghold. They show him around their House of Night to let him see he's in a different place and that they are not evil rebels trying to kill him. He finally fully believes them after seeing that humans are free to live normal human lives and that they are not vampyre refrigerators, and that Lenobia and her horses are still alive. They interrogate Other Jack, as he is now affectionately called, about what his world is like. Neferet has taken over with her vampyre armies, Blue and Red. Red fledglings are overcome with blood lust and can barely function when they're not killing people. They also crave living flesh and their bites are contagious. They don't create other red vampyres, but they do create zombies who can then create other zombies. His world is not a pretty place, which is why he wants to stay.

Detective Marx and Darius and the rest of the warriors return. All the humans and fledglings in the restaurant were killed, as we knew they would be. Zoey tells them Other Jack’s story and lets Detective Marx know that all the dead bodies needed to be decapitated or burned so they won't come back as zombies because severing the spine or burning are the only ways to kill these red creatures who are very like classic vampires. The warriors and the police are going to search for the red army in the tunnels and capture them while the sun is up... if they can find them, that is.

After hearing Other Jack’s story, Damien is sad. Well, he’s been sad for a long time, but this just takes the cake. Grandma Redbird brings him some turquoise and helps him realize a few things: that he has depression, that he has to want to truly live, and that even though Other Jack is different, he's still Jack and that Damien would love him in whatever body he returned in. She also brought Duchess, their/Stark's dog, to go with Damien to visit with Other Jack. They talk about how much they miss the other versions of each other, how the other versions are dead, Jack by falling on a sword while singing show tunes and Damien by suicide, and then they kiss. Other Jack turns feral but then touches Grandma's turquoise which hurts him. In shame, Other Jack tells Damien and Duchess to leave, but they don't. They stay with him until he falls asleep.

It turns out, not everyone escaped safely from the grotto disaster. Aphrodite's mother was bitten and is in the ICU but doesn't know she's going to become zombified. Aphrodite goes to visit and of course her mother is awful, telling her that she's going to help her with the mayoral election by pandering to the wealthy white voters, the only voters that matter. They're going to charge double for everything vampyre to make lots of money for Tulsa’s elite. She tells Aphrodite that she can pretend to be human-passing enough to help her. Aphrodite tells her mother that she's a monster and she's going to become a monster and die a monster. She leaves the hospital while her mother yells at her.

Zoey, Stark and Shaunee are headed to the tunnels to help the warriors and detective Marx track down the red zombies when they come upon Aphrodite shambling through the street. She's drunk and high and sad. Zoey tells her she needs to get her life in order and this makes her angry, so she quits the Tulsa House of Night and says she's moving to New York. We all know that's not going to happen. She gets back to the school and goes to Nyx's temple. Aphrodite is struggling with the fact that she is becoming terrible just like her mother and decides she doesn't want to do that and wants to get sober and is met by Nyx. They talk about Aphrodite losing her Mark when she gave the red fledglings their humanity, whether or not these other red fledglings and vampyres deserve to have their humanity back and whether or not her mother deserves a second chance. Yes to the red fledglings and no to her mother. Nyx gives the other reds their humanity and heals Aphrodite's mother and also gives Aphrodite a new power. She is now a bridge between worlds and can grant people second chances. She also becomes a fully changed vampyre, not red OR blue, but red AND blue. When she gives a second chance, she will lose part of her Mark and when it's all gone, she will become human again, will have a family with children, grandchildren and great grandchildren then die peacefully at an old age.

Meanwhile, Damien wakes up in Other Jack's room to find him sobbing and holding Duchess. But it's not after sundown, how is he possibly awake? Somehow Other Jack's humanity has been restored. Aphrodite saunters in, makes sure that Other Jack is restored, sees that he is, and leaves the boys to celebrate. Wink wink. Also meanwhile, Zombie Red leaders Dominic and Kevin search for their secret entrances to the tunnels that they've hidden all over Tulsa but can't find many. They finally get underground to rest, splitting up into two locations, Dominic with the red vampyres, Kevin with the red fledglings, but Kevin begins to worry about possibly being in another world and hopes Zoey will help him. Suddenly, instead of falling dead asleep like the red fledglings normally do, they jolt awake and realize that they aren't craving human flesh anymore and that they can remember their lives after the change. What is going on? Many can't handle whatever it is that just happened to them and freak out. Some of them run out of their hiding place into the sun and the waiting police. They... don't survive. Yikes. Kevin decides he's going to go to the House of Night to find Zoey when the sun goes down.

Zoey desperately wants to find Kevin because she’s pretty sure it was him she saw earlier. She feels badly that she abandoned this world’s Kevin after being Marked, but she was disowned by their step loser while he was adopted by him. Their older sister, Barbie, is just fine on her own, studying booze and boys in college, but she realizes she shouldn’t have left Kevin. She and Shaunee and Stark searched for him earlier but gave up as the sun rose since Stark couldn't be out and all the captured reds were gaining their humanity back and Zoey needed to be at the school. Now the sun is going down again so she's about to go out and search, but then Rephaim and Stevie Rae arrive with dire news. Kalona told Rephaim that he did not visit Zoey in her dream. Uh, what? Then who did? Uh oh... It was the white bull the whole time. Bullpoopie.

Kevin shows up at the House of Night and joins up with Zoey and the Nerd Herd. He tells his story from his world and here’s the abbreviated version: Reds are bloodthirsty, ones that have any grasp on anything other than blood are made leaders of the army, Neferet started a war between vampyres and humans, Stark is a general there, is blue, and is a consort of Neferet, Kevin knows nothing of the bulls, he was Marked the day Zoey died in the exact way Zoey was Marked, except red, not blue. It turns out that he is his world's Zoey. But wait? Is he? Does he have an affinity for all five elements? Uh... What? Reds aren't allowed to cast circles or be anywhere near Nyx or have anything to do with the elements. Better do a test.

They cast a circle and of course Kevin has an affinity for all five elements. They celebrate this until Kevin breaks down, atoning for his past. Then he realizes he has to go back to his world and defeat Neferet. But how do they send him back? Just like Zoey just taught him with closing a circle, sending the elements back in reverse order, they have to do everything they did in Woodward park but in reverse. And they have to do it now. Zoey tells him to find his own Nerd Herd when he gets to his world and to come back if he needs help. All this world's Nerd Herd are sad that he's leaving, especially Aphrodite, who seems to have a deeper, almost romantic, connection with him. He's got a major crush on her, obviously, but it seems she's reciprocating a little bit. They even kiss. The group does everything in reverse, this time thinking that Aphrodite's mom deserves a second chance instead of thinking she needs to be eaten, and send Kevin on his way. When they get back to the House of Night, Stark surprises Zoey with a slumber party in her old dorm room with all her friends and Grandma, and popcorn and brown pop. Aphrodite gets a phone call then that her mother ODed so she pours out her champagne and dumps her xanax down the toilet (which you totally should never do). Good for you, Aphrodite. Finally, the next day, Zoey goes back to the grotto. She prays for Nyx to keep Other Kevin safe and realizes that she pities Neferet more than she hates her and tells her to Blessed Be, then calls her Kevin. As she's talking to her brother, tendrils of Darkness reach out for her from the grotto.