Nyx in the House of Night

Warrior sworn to the Goddess Nyx. His oath bound him to protect her from Darkness, but when he turned away from her, jealous of her consort Erebus, she banished him from the Otherworld forever.
    Kalona’s fall from the Otherworld bears several parallels to the legends of Lucifer, especially as portrayed in John Milton’s 1667 epic poem, Paradise Lost . Like Kalona, Lucifer was once the most glorious and beautiful of angels, a being of light. “Lucifer,” in fact, means “Light Giver,” and he is sometimes referred to as Morningstar or “son of the morning” (Isaiah 14). Like Kalona, Lucifer’s beautiful white wings turned black when he fell (though in Paradise Lost he loses his feathers entirely and gets big ugly bat wings, as his outward appearance starts to reflect his inward evil).
Not-So-Dark Secrets about Lucifer
F un fact: The planet Venus—aka, the “morning star” when it appears before sunrise, outshining all the stars in the heavens—was once known as Lucifer.
Funner fact: The chemical that makes fireflies’ butts light up is called “luciferin.”
    And like Kalona, Lucifer became jealous when someone else took his place as most favored of his beloved—just substitute the eternal Son in heaven (and eventually humans on earth) for Erebus and God the Father for Nyx. Though Lucifer and Kalona held exalted roles, it wasn’t enough. Both immortals’ pride got the better of them, causing their rebellion and expulsion from their beautiful homes.
    In Untamed , both Zoey’s grandmother and Sister Mary Angela compare Kalona to the Nephilim, the legendary angels who fell from heaven and are said to have mated with mortal women on earth. Grandma Redbird says that Goliath (of David and Goliath fame) is sometimes said to have been one of the Nephilim, who were all of superhuman size and strength.
    But while Lucifer (or Satan, as he is called after the Fall) rejected the notion of love and embraced his sin of pride—uttering the infamous line, “Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven”—Kalona continues to delude himself that he did it all for love. His is a perverted conception of love, however, requiring absolute control and obedience. In his scenes with Zoey, he professes his utmost devotion to her—until she questions or rejects him, and then he inevitably launches into an immortal-sized sulkfest.
    In Burned , the Raven Mocker Rephaim tells Stevie Rae that he and his brothers were born from Kalona’s rage and bitterness at being tossed from the Otherworld. This is metaphorically true, though a bit of a stretch. After all, the Raven Mockers didn’t just pop out of Kalona’s head. For them to exist, he had to act—and act badly.
    By connecting Kalona to the Raven Mockers, the House of Night series compellingly fits this fictional immortal being into existing Cherokee mythology. After Nyx’s rejection, Kalona dwelled on earth along with other fallen angels, according to Grandma Redbird. He appeared to the Cherokee people, who worshipped him in gratitude for their healthy crops and fertile women.
    Of course, mere praise wasn’t enough for him. Kalona’s unspent lust (or what his supernatural powers of rationalization would call his unrequited longing for Nyx) drove him to sleep with the women of the tribe. The Cherokee grew disillusioned and spurned him, but rather than leaving, Kalona became rapacious and domineering, feeding his insatiable appetite for power and sex. Those he raped gave birth to the Raven Mockers.
    Kalona’s second downfall is told through the story of another figure created for the House of Night—A-ya. Since mere human warriors couldn’t stop Kalona, “a creature of myth and magic,” the Wise Women got together to figure out how to defeat him. As an immortal being, Kalona obviously couldn’t be killed. But perhaps he could be trapped by his two weaknesses—his hunger for women and his vulnerability to the earth. So the Wise Women sculpted from clay a beautiful, irresistible maiden, A-ya, and breathed life into her. (A-ya means “me” in the Cherokee language, perhaps indicating that this maiden was to represent all women or even all humanity.)
    Interestingly, this process is much like that described in tales of the golem in Jewish tradition. In Hebrew, golem stands for “unformed substance” or “shapeless mass.” To create a golem, one would sculpt a man-shaped figure out of clay and then bring it to life with some form of the word “God,” since