Untamed (House of Night, Book 4): A House of Night Novel

by P. C. Cast

  “Maleficent, it’s okay. Zoey’s hateful, but she won’t hurt me,” she said wearily.

  The cat growled again, but subsided back into a white ball. I turned my attention to Aphrodite. Her eyes were completely bloodshot—it was so bad that the whites of them were totally red. Not pink and inflamed like she was allergic to pollen and she’d just walked through a field of it. They were red. As in blood. As in blood filling her eyes and staining them scarlet.

  “This one was really bad.” She sounded awful. Her voice was shaky, and her face was scarily white. “C-can you get me a bottle of Fiji Water from the fridge?”

  I hurried over to her mini-fridge and grabbed a bottle of water from it. Then I detoured into her bathroom, where I got one of her gold-embroidered washcloths. (Jeesh, she is so darn rich!) I quickly poured some of the cold spring water onto the washcloth before hurrying back to her.

  “Drink some of this, and then close your eyes and put this across your face.”

  “I look terrible, don’t I?”

  “Yep.”

  She took several big gulps from the Fiji bottle like she was dying of thirst, then put the cold, wet washcloth over her eyes and leaned back against her mound of designer pillows with an exhausted sigh. Maleficent watched me with mean, slitted cat eyes, which I ignored.

  “Have your eyes ever done that before?”

  “You mean hurt like hell?”

  I hesitated and decided to just tell her. It wasn’t like Aphrodite avoided mirrors. She’d see for herself soon enough. “I mean turn bright, blood red.”

  I saw the little jerk of surprise her body gave, and she started to reach for the washcloth, but her hand stopped and plopped back down on the bed and her shoulders slumped. “No wonder Darius freaked and ran for you like the hounds of f-ing hell were after him.”

  “I’m sure it’ll go away. You should probably just keep your eyes closed for a while.”

  She sighed dramatically. “It’s really going to piss me off if these damn visions start making me ugly.”

  “Aphrodite,” I said, trying to keep my smile out of my voice. “You’re too pretty to ever be ugly. Or at least that’s what you’ve told all of us about a zillion times.”

  “You’re right. Even with red eyes, I’m better looking than everyone else. Thanks for reminding me. It just shows how stressed this vision bullshit is making me that I’d even consider worrying about it.”

  “Speaking of the vision bullpoopy. You want to fill me in on this one?”

  “You know, you really wouldn’t melt or anything if you’d cuss a little. My Goddess, bullpoopy is unbelievably lame.”

  “Could you please stay on the subject?”

  “Fine. But don’t blame me when people tell you that you sound lame and annoying. Over there on my desk there’s a piece of paper with a poem written on it. Do you see it?”

  I went over to her pricey vanity/desk, and sure enough, there was a single sheet of paper lying alone against the glistening wood. I picked it up. “I see it,” I said.

  “Good. You’re supposed to read it, and I hope you understand what the hell it means. I never can figure out poetry. It’s all boring bullshit.”

  She emphasized the shit part of the word. I ignored her and focused on the poem. As soon as I got a good look at it, my skin started to tingle and gooseflesh lifted on my arms as if a cold wind had just blown over me.

  “Did you write this?”

  “Oh, yeah, right. I didn’t even like Dr. Seuss when I was a kid. No damn way I wrote that poem.”

  “I didn’t mean did you compose it. I meant did you physically write it down?”

  “Are you getting stupider? Yes, Zoey. I wrote down the poem that I saw in my horrid and way-too-painful vision. No, I didn’t compose it. I copied it. Satisfied?”

  I looked at her reclining back on her pillows in the middle of her expensive four-poster canopy bed with the gold-embroidered washcloth over her face and one hand petting her awful cat and shook my head in irritation. She looked one hundred gazillion percent diva bitch. “You know, I could smother you with your pillow and no one would miss you. By the time they found you, that hateful cat would have eaten you and all the evidence of my crime.”

  “Maleficent wouldn’t eat me. She’d eat you if you tried any crap. Plus, Darius would miss me. Just read the damn poem and tell me what it means.”

  “You’re Vision Girl. You’re supposed to know what things mean.” I turned my attention back to the poem. What was it about the writing that was making me feel so weird?

  “That’s right, I vision. I don’t interpret. I’m just the very attractive oracle. You’re the High Priestess in training, remember? So figure it out.”

  “All right—all right. Let me read it out loud. Sometimes it helps make poems understandable when you can hear them.”

  “Whatever. Just get to the figuring out part.”

  I cleared my throat and started reading.

  Ancient one sleeping, waiting to arise

  When earth’s power bleeds sacred red

  The mark strikes true; Queen Tsi Sgili will devise

  He shall be washed from his entombing bed

  Through the hand of the dead he is free

  Terrible beauty, monstrous sight

  Ruled again they shall be

  Women shall kneel to his dark might

  Kalona’s song sounds sweet

  As we slaughter with cold heat

  When I was finished I paused, trying to understand what it meant and trying to figure out why it made me feel so freaked out.

  “It’s scary, isn’t it?” Aphrodite said. “I mean, it’s definitely not love and roses and happily ever after.”

  “It’s definitely not that. Okay, let’s see. What’s earth’s power, and when does it bleed red?”

  “Don’t have a clue.”

  “Hum.” I chewed my cheek, thinking. “Well, the earth could look like it’s bleeding when something is killed and the blood leaks into the ground. And maybe the power part comes from whatever is killed. Like a powerful person.”

  “Or a powerful vampyre. It’s like when I found Professor Nolan’s body.” The smartass in Aphrodite’s voice was subdued by the memory. “The earth looked like it was bleeding then.”

  “Yeah, you’re right. So it might have something to do with this Queen Tsi Sgili dying or being killed because a queen is definitely a powerful person.”

  “Who the hell is Queen Tsi Whatever?”

  “It sounds familiar to me. The name seems Cherokee. I wonder if it might—” My words were broken off by my gasp of shock as suddenly I knew why the writing had made me feel so weird.

  “What?” Aphrodite sat up again, lifting the washcloth off her eyes and squinting at me. “What’s wrong?”

  “It’s the writing,” I said through lips that had gone cold. “This is my grandma’s handwriting.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  “Your grandma’s handwriting?” Aphrodite said. “Are you sure?”

  “Positive.”

  “But that’s impossible. I wrote the damn thing just a few minutes ago.”

  “Look, I practically transported here with Darius, and that should have been impossible, but I definitely did it.”

  “Yes, dork, seeing as there is no such thing as Star Trek.”

  “You recognized the transporter reference. You’re a dork, too,” I said smugly.

  “No, I’m just burdened with geeky friends.”

  “Look, I’m positive it’s Grandma’s handwriting, but hang on. I have a letter from her in my room. I’ll go get it. Maybe you’re right . . .” I lifted my brows at her and added, “. . . for a change, and it just reminds me of her writing.” I started to hurry from the room, but on second thought stopped long enough to hold the paper with the poem on it up to Aphrodite. “Is this your normal handwriting?”

  She took the paper from me and blinked several times to clear her vision. I saw the shock pass over her face and knew what she’d
say before she spoke. “Well, shit! This is soooo not my writing.”

  “I’ll be right back.”

  I tried not to overthink what was going on while I rushed down the hall to my room, flung open the door, and was greeted by Nala’s “mee-uf-ow!” of disgruntled surprise as I interrupted her beauty nap.

  It took me only a second to grab the last card Grandma had sent me. I had it sitting up on my desk (a much cheaper version of the one in Aphrodite’s room). On the front of it was a picture of three grim-faced nuns (nuns!). The caption under them said, THE GOOD NEWS IS THEY’RE PRAYING FOR YOU. Inside it continued, THE BAD NEWS IS THERE ARE ONLY THREE OF THEM. It still made me giggle a little as I hurried back to Aphrodite’s room, even as I wondered if Sister Mary Angela would think the card was funny or insulting. I’d bet on funny, and made a mental note to ask her about it sometime.

  Aphrodite had her hand already out when I returned to her room. “Okay, let me check it out.” I gave her the card and looked down with her as she held it open to the short note Grandma had written me. Then she held the paper that had the poem right up next to it and we looked from one to the other, comparing the handwriting.

  “That is so damn weird!” Aphrodite said, shaking her head at the utter similarity of the handwriting. “I swear I wrote this poem not five minutes ago, but that’s definitely your grandma’s writing and not mine.” She looked up at me. Her face looked ultra-white in comparison to the awful blood color of her eyes. “You’d better call her.”

  “Yeah, I will. First I want to know everything you remember about that vision.”

  “Okay with you if I shut my eyes and put the washcloth back on my face while I talk?”

  “Yeah, I’ll even put some fresh water on it. Speaking of, drink some more out of that bottle. You look, well, bad.”

  “No wonder. I feel bad.” She gulped down the rest of the Fiji Water while I rinsed out the washcloth again. After I folded it up and gave it back to her, she laid it across her eyes and settled back against her pillows again, absently stroking the purring Maleficent. “I wish I knew what this was all about,” she said.

  “I think I do.”

  “No shit? You have the poem figured out?”

  “No, I didn’t mean that. I meant I think this is all about that bad feeling Stevie Rae and I have been having about Neferet. She’s up to something—something more than her usual brand of pain in the butt. I think she graduated to whatever it is that’s going on now when Loren was killed.”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised if you’re right, but I have to tell you Neferet had no part of my vision.”

  “So explain it to me.”

  “Well, it was short and unusually clear for what my visions have been like lately. It was a pretty summer day. I couldn’t tell who it was, but there was a woman sitting in the middle of a field or, no, it was more like a pasture or something. I could see a little cliff not far away, and I could hear water from a stream or small river close by. Anyway, the woman was sitting on a big white eyelet quilt. I remember thinking that it wasn’t very smart of that woman to have a white quilt out there on the ground like that. It was going to get all grass stained.”

  “It didn’t.” I spoke through lips that felt numb and cold again. “It was cotton, and it washed up easily.”

  “So you know what I’m describing?”

  “It’s Grandma’s quilt.”

  “Then it must have been your grandma who was holding the poem. I didn’t see her face. I actually didn’t see much of her at all. She was sitting cross-legged, and it was like I was standing behind her, peeking over her shoulder. Only, once I saw the poem, everything else went out of the vision and I was totally focused on it.”

  “Why did you copy it down?”

  Her shoulders shrugged. “Don’t really know. I just had to, that’s all. So I wrote it down while I was still in the vision. Then I came out of it, looked up at Darius, told him to get you, and then I think I fainted.”

  “That’s it?”

  “What more do you want? I copied the whole damn poem.”

  “But your visions are usually warnings about majorly bad stuff getting ready to happen. So where’s the warning?”

  “There wasn’t one. Actually, I didn’t have any bad feelings at all. There was just the poem. The field place was really nice—I mean for being all out in nature. Like I said, it was a pretty summer day. Everything seemed fine and dandy until I came out of the vision and my head and my eyes hurt like hell.”

  “Well, I have a bad enough feeling about this for both of us,” I said, pulling my phone from my purse. I glanced at the time. It was almost 3 A.M. Crap! Grandma would be sound asleep. Also I realized I was going to miss all my classes today except for that very public scene with Erik in Drama class. Great. I sighed heavily. I knew Grandma would understand—I could only hope my professors would, too.

  She answered on the first ring.

  “Oh, Zoeybird! I’m so glad you called.”

  “Grandma, I’m sorry to call you so late. I know you’re sleeping, and I hate waking you up,” I said.

  “No, u-we-tsi-a-ge-ya, I was not asleep. I woke hours ago from a dream of you, and I have been awake and praying ever since.”

  Her familiar use of the Cherokee word for “daughter” made me feel loved and safe, and I suddenly wished so bad that her lavender farm wasn’t an hour and a half outside Tulsa. I wished that I could see her now and let her hug me and tell me that everything would be okay, just like she used to do when I was little and I stayed with her after my mom married the step-loser and turned into an ultra-religious version of a Stepford Wife.

  But I wasn’t little anymore, and Grandma couldn’t hug my problems away. I was becoming a High Priestess, and people depended on me. Nyx had chosen me, and I had to learn to be strong.

  “Honey? What is it? What has happened?”

  “It’s okay, Grandma; I’m okay,” I assured her quickly, hating to hear the worry in her voice. “It’s just that Aphrodite has had another vision, and it has something to do with you.”

  “Am I in danger again?”

  I couldn’t help smiling. She’d sounded worried and upset when she thought something might be wrong with me, but when it was just herself that might be in danger, then she sounded all tough and ready to take on the world. I really heart my grandma!

  “No, I don’t think so,” I said.

  “I don’t either,” Aphrodite added.

  “Aphrodite says you’re not in danger. At least not at this instant.”

  “Well, that’s good,” Grandma said, sounding very matter-of-fact.

  “That’s definitely good. But, Grandma, the thing is we really don’t understand what Aphrodite’s vision was about this time. There’s usually a big warning that’s clear. This time all she saw was you holding a piece of paper with a poem on it, and she felt like she had to copy the poem.” I didn’t mention the part about her copying it in Grandma’s own handwriting. That felt like adding super weird to already majorly weird. “So she did, but it doesn’t make sense or mean anything to either one of us.”

  “Well, perhaps you should read the poem to me. Maybe I’ll recognize it.”

  “Yeah, that’s what we thought, too. Okay, here goes.” Sightlessly Aphrodite held up the sheet of paper with the poem on it. I took it from her and started to read:

  Ancient one sleeping, waiting to arise

  When earth’s power bleeds sacred red

  The mark strikes true; Queen Tsi Sgili will devise

  Here Grandma stopped me. “It is pronounced t-si s-gi-li,” she said, with special emphasis on the last word. Her voice sounded strained and she spoke almost in a whisper.

  “Are you okay, Grandma?”

  “Go on reading, u-we-tsi-a-ge-ya,” she commanded, sounding more like herself. I kept reading, repeating the last line with the right pronunciation:

  The mark strikes true; Queen Tsi Sgili will devise

  He shall be washed from his entombing bedr />
  Through the hand of the dead he is free

  Terrible beauty, monstrous sight

  Ruled again they shall be

  Women shall kneel to his dark might

  Kalona’s song sounds sweet

  As we slaughter with cold heat

  Grandma gasped and cried, “O Great Spirit protect us!”

  “Grandma! What is it?”

  “First the Tsi Sgili and then Kalona. This is bad, Zoey. This is very, very bad.”

  The fear in her voice was totally freaking me out. “What’s a Tsi Sgili and a Kalona? Why is it so bad?”

  “Does she know the poem?” Aphrodite asked, sitting up and taking the washcloth off her face. I noticed her eyes were starting to look more normal and her face had gotten some of its color back.

  “Grandma, do you care if I put you on speaker phone?”

  “No, of course not, Zoeybird.”

  I pressed the speaker button and went over to sit on the bed beside Aphrodite. “Okay, you’re on speaker now, Grandma. It’s just me and Aphrodite here.”

  “Aphrodite and me,” she automatically corrected me.

  I rolled my eyes at Aphrodite. “Sorry, Grandma, Aphrodite and me.”

  “Mrs. Redbird, do you recognize the poem?” Aphrodite asked.

  “Sweetheart, call me Grandma. And, no, I don’t recognize it, as in having read it before. But I’ve heard of it, or at least I’ve heard of the myth, passed down from generation to generation in my people.”

  “Why did you freak out about the Tsi Sgili and the Kalona part?” I asked.

  “They are Cherokee demons. Dark spirits of the worst type.” Grandma hesitated, and I could hear her rustling around with something in the background. “Zoey, I’m going to light the smudge pot before we speak any more of these creatures. I’m using sage and lavender. I’ll be fanning the smoke with a dove’s feather while we talk. Zoeybird, I suggest you do the same.”