Chapter 27
Recovered Journal of Dr. Georgia Clark
June 18, Year 1, Emergence Era
I don’t know what I’m doing. This … romance, if that’s what it is, is ill-advised. It can’t happen. It’s not a thing. I keep telling myself that, but then he touches me, and I’m a puddle. It’s been so long since I’ve felt cared for, since I’ve felt this sort of … want. I’m always concerned with needs—we need more samples, we need the lights to stay on, we need a cure. But when I’m with him, just us, there is only bare, raw, aching want .
T he black is syrupy horror, as if there are webs strewn across the corridor, each of them holding me back a bit more.
“Juno?” I call, then clap my mouth closed at the bitterness on my tongue. As if the darkness has a taste.
There’s nothing. I’m in the center of a black hole, gravity pulling everything to me. Moments away from being crushed, wadded up like a piece of paper. It’s hard to breathe as I stumble forward, my hands in front of me again searching for something whole.
I could turn back, but Carlotta is there waiting for me. Will she enter this darkness? Maybe she can see through it, though I know it’s not a normal lack of light. There’s something different about this, something that keeps pushing against me, silently telling me to go away. Screaming ‘danger’ at a fever pitch without making a sound.
The black turns even more corporeal, strands of it between my outstretched fingers and catching around my throat. I tear at myself, ripping the threads away as I push even deeper. Juno is here. It’s been so long since I’ve heard her voice, but I’d know it anywhere. No matter how much time has passed. I know my sister.
The walls close in, the velvet strands turning more solid. I strain, forging ahead though everything tries to repel me. My foot catches on something, and I fall forward, my hands scraping along the stone floor. I smell blood.
Crawling now, I bow my head and use my shoulders. The claustrophobia is only second to my fear of Carlotta. I could suffocate here, my lungs clogged with this black substance. But that’s still a better death than whatever Carlotta has planned.
I take in a breath through gritted teeth. Still crawling, I almost fall forward when the strands ease. I keep going, my movements less restricted, the walls fading away, the velvet growing thinner. Moving faster now, my palms and knees aching from the unforgiving stone, I get back to my feet. The blackness clears, and ahead there’s a glow. Daylight? I knock that thought away. I’m far too deep underground. Still, I break free of the last bits of black web and jog toward it.
“Juno?” My voice carries and echoes back to me.
The walls beside me change to bars. Cells line the walls, most of them with open doors. Some with skeletons. A true dungeon. Why is Juno in here?
“Juno!” I call again.
“Here.” A hand reaches out between the bars farther down the hall.
I run. My sister. Juno. She’s alive. Everything inside me soars, floating above the fear and the pain. I’m flying. She’s here .
Skidding to a stop in front of her cell, I see her. It only takes a moment—not even that—and I know.
“Finally come to see your big sister?” Her hand is still extended beyond the bars, her nails now terminating in thick, sharp points. Claws.
I stare, taking in her smooth brown skin. Her left eye is gone, nothing there but a smooth socket. Her other is the warm brown shade I remember. It’s her, but not her. Her hair flows in black curls, only a few strands of gray still mixed in. Wearing a loose gray t-shirt and lounge pants, she seems completely at ease. My sister, but not.
I can only look at her. My fervent hope come to life as a nightmare. My sister is alive. My sister is a vampire.
“You never did have a way with words, did you?” She pulls her hand back through the bars. “That was my gift.”
“How?” The question comes out strangled, as if my throat didn’t want to let it go.
“Valen told me you didn’t know I was here. I thought he was mistaken, that you were far too clever not to realize he had me stashed away.” She sighs and walks backward with a slight limp, then sits on her cot and crosses her legs at the knee. Spine straight as always, posture impeccable, poise without effort. My sister. But not. “But I suppose I overestimated you.”
Vertigo threatening to topple me, I grip the bars. “You were dead.”
“Was I?” She shrugs one shoulder. “I don’t remember much of it. I mean, I remember the White House.” She wrinkles her nose. “Theo. Yes, I remember him quite well. But when Valen turned me …” She looks up as if racking her brain. “I don’t even know how it happened. I woke up here, and this is where I’ve stayed.” She grits her teeth, her fangs pressing against her bottom lip. “A prisoner. I’m the president of the United fucking States!” she hisses.
“Valen turned you?”
“Yes. Though I don’t know if it’s much of an improvement.” She vaguely points at her face. “The eye was already ruined, so he says, and my back too broken to mend completely. But I suppose I’m still alive. In a way.” She scoots farther back and leans against the wall. “You really didn’t know I was here?”
“No!” I crumple, my knees giving out as I sink to the floor. “I didn’t know.” So many emotions tumble through me. Relief, shock, and surprisingly, anger. Not a slight irritation, a growing bubble of red-hot rage. It’s as if the box I kept it tucked away in has ruptured, the guts oozing and spreading.
Her head turns quickly, the movement almost mechanical. “Someone’s following you.”
“Shit!” I forgot about Carlotta the minute I saw Juno.
“There’s some sort of blood magic or woowoo spell work on the walls. Valen said it would keep you out. So who else is coming to this reunion party?”
“It’s another vampire. A Tantun.”
“You should come in here with me. You’ll be safe.” Juno is at the bars immediately, her one eye focused on me, the pupil dilated. “Unlock the door.”
“I don’t have the key.”
“It has to be here somewhere.” She juts her chin toward the other cells. “Just look.”
I scramble up and stare at the black mass down the hall. No Carlotta. Not yet, anyway.
“Better hurry,” Juno’s voice is almost amused.
I search her face, looking for my sister somewhere underneath. I don’t find her. “You’re not you anymore.”
She gives a grim chuckle. “Neither are you.”
I back away down the hall, keeping the black hole in my field of vision while I search for any sign of a key. The only light is a single sconce above Juno’s cell, and it fades quickly with each step I take away from it.
Peeking into cell after cell, I find tattered clothes, some moldy books, and bones. Lots of bones. No key, though. By the time I’m at the farthest limit of the light, Juno hisses. “She’s coming through. Hurry!”
I test the door of the cell I’m in, swinging it shut and trying to lock it. Nothing. It needs a key. I’m defenseless with nowhere to hide. “There’s no key.”
“There has to be!” she says, irritation lacing her words. “Find it!”
“It’s too late.” Leaving the cell, I walk back to Juno, my gaze drawn to her, to the woman I used to put every ounce of my faith in. What is she now? And what am I?
“Keep looking. It’s safe in here.” She grips the bars.
“Is it?”
She cocks her head to the side, eerie and unlike her. “What does that mean?”
“Valen told me that becoming a vampire doesn’t make someone a monster. It only enhances whoever they already are. Whatever is underneath comes to the fore.”
She arches the brow over her good eye. “And?”
“And …” I shake my head. “I believed in you. I trusted you more than I trusted myself. I thought I knew you. I thought I knew you in the way that only sisters can know each other. But after everything, I think I was wrong.”
“Is that so?” Her expression turns sour.
I nod slowly. “Yeah.”
“Let me help you out, sister . We aren’t blood. We never were blood. You are no more my sister than Miss Bones over there.” She hooks her thumb at the skeleton in the next cell. “So if you have any more high and lofty pronouncements about?—”
“Finally!” Carlotta strides through the darkness and wipes away the tendrils of black from her clothes. “What a spell.”
“Get back!” Juno reaches through the bars and grabs me, yanking me to her, one of her hands at my throat.
“Juno!”
“Shut up!” She presses her claw into my skin, drawing blood.
“What’s this?” Carlotta, unhurried, walks to me, her gaze bouncing from me to Juno and back again.
“Come any closer and I’ll tear her throat out,” Juno growls.
Carlotta stops and puts her hands on her hips. “That wouldn’t be ideal, of course, but killing her is certainly on my agenda. I’d prefer to ask her a few questions first, though. And you are?” she asks, peering around me.
“A vampire in a cage. Set me free, and I’ll release this human.”
Carlotta blinks a few times. “Hang on. You’re …” Her eyes go wide. “You’re Juno.”
“Well, I guess she isn’t as dumb as she looks.” Juno’s tone is pure acid.
Carlotta bears her fangs. “When the high lord finds out about this…” She laughs and steps toward me again.
I yelp when Juno digs her claw in deeper.
“Your own sister? Really?” Carlotta asks her.
“She’s adopted.”
Carlotta’s eyes narrow. “I’m no longer amused. Give her to me.”
“No.”
Carlotta shrugs and steps closer. “I would’ve taken you to Gregor alive, but now I’ve changed my mind.”
“I would’ve let you have her, but I’ve been waiting for?—”
“Georgia!” Valen jumps through the black portal. He’s covered in blood, his gaze meeting mine as he barrels forward, then moves too fast for me to track. Something explodes behind me, and I whirl.
Valen has Carlotta pinned against one of the cells, his hands at her throat. She swings, raking her claws across his face in a vicious slash.
He rears back and punches her hard in the face, her neck cracking and her head banging against the metal. Then he hits her again and again.
“Get back.” Juno grabs my arm through the bars and yanks me hard, tossing me down the hall toward the black hole.
Carlotta slashes Valen again, then rears back and kicks him. He crashes into the stone wall, the sound of shattering rock filling the entire corridor as he hits his knees.
“Fucking Dragonis!” Carlotta screams and kicks him again. “Half human dog!” She brings her knee up, smashing his chin.
I hear the bones break, the horrible snapping and creaking.
“When you’re gone, Gregor is next, and then—” She lands a vicious haymaker to the side of his head. “Tantun will rule as we always should have.” Grabbing a handful of his hair, she lifts him from the floor. “Your line will die. Dragonis will be just as extinct as the humans!” She raises her other hand, the claws splayed wide.
Valen is limp, his head lolling back, neck exposed.
She’s going to kill him. I see it before it happens, his head severed from his body. I feel it, too, like splintered glass in my veins, parts of me dying right along with him. Parts that are somehow… connected. A flash of the two trees, one fading, one already gone.
“Valen!” I scream, the sound tearing free like a thorn pulled from my side.
His head snaps forward, and one of his hands does too. It passes through Carlotta’s chest, Valen’s bloody, sizzling fist outside her back, her heart caged in his palm.
She staggers and releases her hold on him.
With a twitch of his fingers, he crushes her heart, sending a cascade of sizzling blood raining down on the black stone.
She screeches, her body convulsing, only standing because she’s impaled on Valen’s arm. He shoves her to the side, and she drops and twitches. Then she goes still.
“Georgia!” Valen appears in front of me, his face bloody and mangled, white mandible poking through his skin. He kneels, his eyes searching mine. “Are you hurt?”
Yes. In ways I can’t even put into words. In ways I don’t understand.
Two trees, both of them linked by blood. A bond.
“I’m fine, if anyone cares,” Juno calls. “She’s fine, too.”
“She’s bleeding,” he snaps, the words slightly slurred. Then he wipes his less bloody hand on his shirt and slits his finger open with his fang. “Here.” He wipes his blood along the cuts from Juno’s claws.
“Juno.” I stare at him. “You saved Juno.”
“Saved?” Juno scoffs.
Valen ignores her. “I had to.”
“Why?”
He gingerly touches his jaw, then presses the bone back into his skin.
“Are you hurt anywhere else?” He takes one of my hands and frowns at the scrapes.
“Valen.”
He wipes his blood along my wounds.
“Valen, look at me.”
He meets my gaze, his eyes cold at first. The same hardness in them I’ve seen from the moment I woke up in this buried hell. But as I look at him, the ice fractures. Then it melts. Emotion, an entire ocean of it, lives in his gaze. All of it focused on me, tugging at some invisible link I can almost feel.
“Tell me why,” I say softly.
He stills, only his eyes still raging with life, the blue unruly and electric. “Because you would’ve wanted me to.”
“I don’t understand.” I reach up and touch his cheek, the skin warm. “But I want to.”
Something breaks in him. A dam. A dawn. His hand shaking, he puts his wrist to his mouth and slashes deeply. Then he offers it to me.
“Drink.”
I hold his gaze as I lean forward and take his arm in my hands, his blood flowing past my lips and over my tongue. He pulls me closer, my back to his chest as I drink from him.
With a ragged sigh, he presses his lips to my ear and whispers, “Remember.”
The second book in the House of Night Trilogy, Land of Shadow , will be released on May 13, 2025.