Check out our episode here! (featuring Untamed, Hunted and Tempted)
Untamed by P.C. Cast and Kristin Cast
Zoey is hiding in shame in the stables and finally decides to come out to try to talk to her friends. On her way to the cafeteria, she’s attacked by an invisible creature that feels like Darkness. She tries to talk to her friends and they’re kind of being jerks to her, but I mean, come on, she really was acting like a ho, and then Aphrodite shows up. With a Mark on her forehead. Well, maybe it came back. Aphrodite convinces everyone that they should still be friends with Zoey and that she didn’t tell all of her secrets because Neferet is bad and can read minds. Everyone except for Zoey and Aphrodite… The Nerd Herd is back together again and now a new student shows up from the House of Night in Chicago. His name is James Stark and he’s a famous archer.
Zoey meets up with Aphrodite and Stevie Rae and finds out that Stevie Rae is pretty much normal again, except that she sometimes gets ragey and can’t go out in the sun. She also learns that Aphrodite’s mark is drawn on with eyeliner. She’s definitely still a human, but she still has her visions. Stevie Rae leaves by crawling down the wall Dracula-style and then Zoey casts a circle to see if Aphrodite can still be Earth. Nope. They ask for help from Nyx who shows up and tells Aphrodite that she had sooo much humanity that she’s a human again and that she was just a placeholder for Stevie Rae’s earth affinity. She’s still special to Nyx, though, so she can keep her visions.
After Nyx leaves, Zoey and Aphrodite go to a Council Meeting where they and the rest of the nerd herd learn that Shekinah, the High Priestess of all vampyres, has come to the House of Night because she thinks something is going on with Neferet declaring war on humans, so she puts a stop to it. Shekinah thinks that human police should be in charge of human murderers, so she asks if anyone knows a human cop. Zoey suggests Detective Marx and Neferet is disgusted because clearly she’s terrible and hates all humans. Zoey asks if she can start doing charity work with humans to bring humans and vampyres together, which also Neferet hates, and Shekinah allows her to choose the charity and begin work. Also at the time, we learn that Shakina has asked Erik Night to return to the school to be the interim Drama teacher since, also in the last few books, the former drama teacher was murdered. Shekinah asks Zoey to have a cleansing ritual on New Year’s Eve. How’s that going to work with no one to be Earth? As Zoey would say, “ah hell.”
The meeting with Shekinah over, Zoey is walking around campus and comes across Stark practicing his archery. He tells her that he has a gift from Nyx to always hit his mark and he found that out when he MURDERED HIS MENTOR DURING THE VAMPYRE OLYMPICS. Yeah, he really wanted to win and thought how he’d do anything to be the winner. He shot his arrow straight through the guy’s heart. Because he’s so afraid to use his gift, he asks Zoey to help him keep everyone safe and she agrees, but then he rejects the change and dies. Zoey tells him about Stevie Rae coming back to life and he asks her not to forget him. But maybe he’ll come back! Aphrodite has a plan to nanny cam Stark’s corpse so they can be the first ones to get to him if he wakes up. Seems like a great plan.
Next day, during the first part of the school day, Zoey, Darius and Aphrodite go to Street Cats, a local cat shelter that Zoey has chosen for her charity project for the Dark Daughters. Turns out, Street Cats is led by nuns and their leader, Sister Mary Angela, is okay with the fact that Zoey and her friends are fledgling vampyres and thinks of Nyx as another form of the Virgin Mary. We all love Sister Mary Angela. Back at school later that day, Zoey is late for drama class and is pretty much humiliated by Erik who makes her improv Desdemona to his Othello. She uses this dramatization to explain her feelings for him while he’s strangling her, because, you know, Othello kills Desdemona because he thinks she’s a ho, and then they kiss. But as Othello and Desdemona. Oh drama class…
After class, Zoey meets Darius who brings her to Aphrodite using his until now unmentioned gift for super speed. Aphrodite had some visions of Zoey dying a few different ways and one of Grandma Redbird's house and writes down a poem IN GRANDMA’S HANDWRITING. Zoey calls Grandma and together they realize that the poem has to do with an ancient Cherokee legend about Kalona, a fallen angel, rising again with help of the Tsi Sgili, a dark queen. Grandma tells the story of Kalona and how he fell to earth and raped the Cherokee women creating Raven Mockers, his half-bird, half-immortal sons, and how the Ghigua, the Cherokee wise-women, created a maiden from clay to trap Kalona in the earth. Zoey asks Grandma to come to the house of night to help stop Kalona from being freed from the earth. On her way to the school, Grandma is in a car accident. A giant bird flew into the car. Or was it a Raven Mocker?
Zoey begins the cleansing ritual where she’s decided that she’s going to have Aphrodite step away at the last moment from being Earth and reintroduce Stevie Rae and the rest of the red fledglings. During the ceremony, Neferet reveals that Zoey is responsible for the red fledglings and is using them to take over and brings out Stark, who is now a red fledgling, and the nanny cam. Stark is being controlled by Neferet but remembers Zoey. Neferet makes Stark shoot an arrow to kill Stevie Rae and spill her blood on the ground in front of that old oak tree where everything terrible always happens. This time, something else terrible happens. Stevie Rae’s blood soaks into the ground, and Kalona bursts free. This is exactly what that poem said would happen. Neferet reveals herself to be the Tsi Sgili queen and then murders Shekinah. Zoey’s tattoos spread some more to cover the palms of her hands.