Chapter 130: Cole’s Hall

Chapter 130: Chapter 130: Cole’s Hall

They didn’t go home, and in the end Mara stopped telling them to.

Her dojo was an old cargo shed at the edge of the harbor, with a tin roof and big sliding doors and a hand-painted sign over them that said Cole’s Hall. Inside, the floor was polished wood, worn pale in long paths where people had trained on it for years. Straw dummies stood in a row along one wall, and the other wall was lined with mats and water jugs and a shelf of children’s sandals.

"I teach girls from the Red Quarter," Mara said, as she slid the doors shut behind them. "Bar girls, dancers, the daughters of men who owe the court money. The ones most likely to end up in a lane with a cloak standing over them." She went to the water jugs and poured three cups. "I can’t stop the court, but I can teach them where to hit."

"Where to hit," Donald said, "so the blood can’t reach their hands."

Mara looked at him over the rim of her cup. "You were watching."

"I was. I’ve never seen anyone do that."

"Nobody has. I learned it the only way it can be learned." She sat down on the edge of the training floor with her long legs folded under her, and touched the two white scars on her neck. "I was twenty-four when Corvin took me out of a bar on Harbor Street. He kept me for six years. Every night he fed, and every night I felt the blood move in him while he did it, until I knew every path it took through a vampire’s body better than he did." She drank. "A thrall feels everything her master feels. That was the only gift he ever gave me."

Evelyn sat down across from her. "How did you get out?"

"On a blood moon, eight years ago." Mara turned her left arm so they could see the long, twisted burn scar from her shoulder to her elbow. "The Mark runs a line from here to him." She touched her neck, then ran her fingers down the scar. "That night the line was so bright I could see it under my skin. So I took a lamp off the wall and held it against the line until it burned through. It didn’t break the Mark. It only made him lose hold of me for a few hours. That was enough to run."

"And he’s never come after you?"

"He comes every year, on the night of the blood moon. He stands outside these doors and calls me through the Mark." Her voice stayed flat. "Every year I hold on to the floor until morning. This year it’s in six nights."

Donald let Valuation Eye rest on the two small scars for a moment.

[Blood Mark (Thrall Bond)]

[Bound to: Corvin, Wildfire Syndicate.]

[Status: Dormant. Resisted by host will.]

[Note: Strength increases with proximity to the master and during a blood moon.]

"What does the court want with the blood moon?" he asked.

"Everything." Mara set her cup down. "Half the Red Quarter wears a Mark and doesn’t know it. A free drink in the wrong bar, a bite you don’t remember, and you’re on the court’s list. On the blood moon, the Blood Father calls every Mark in the city at once and drinks them all through the anchor. Thousands of people." She looked at Evelyn. "And Corvin isn’t the thing you fought in Westmark anymore. The court gave him a High Vampire’s blood after he came home. He’s Level eighty-four."

---

The attack came a little after midnight.

Donald felt it first, through Lesser Mana Perception, as a ring of cold red points closing in on the shed from three sides. Then the rain started, and it wasn’t rain.

It came down on the tin roof in a sudden roar, thick and red and steaming, and where it ran in through the gaps in the old roof and dripped onto the wooden floor, the wood hissed and blackened.

"Blood-Mage," Mara said, on her feet at once. "On the roof of the crane shed next door. It burns anything it touches that isn’t one of them."

The girls who slept in the back room were awake and screaming. Evelyn was already moving. "I’ll take the roof," she said, and went straight up through the skylight on Celestial Ascent, with Starfall lit. A moment later Donald heard the white roar of Divine Pulse above them, and the red rain on the roof stopped all at once, burned away to steam in the air.

The doors exploded inward.

Six gray cloaks came through them in a wedge. Mara met the first one in the doorway, and Donald went to her left and met the second.

It came at him with a long hooked blood-blade, and he started to raise the Pile Bunker to block. Then he stopped, and did something else.

He had watched Mara do it twice now. He let Valuation Eye settle on the vampire as it swung, not on its rank or its level, but on the red mana moving through its body. For a split second he saw it all, the way the System showed him a price, a bright line of blood running from the vampire’s heart down its right arm and out through its hand into the blade.

He stepped inside the swing, the way Mara had, and drove two fingers into the inside of the vampire’s elbow where the line was brightest.

It wasn’t clean. He hit too hard and half a centimeter wide. But the line flickered, and the blood-blade lost its shape for a moment, and that moment was all he needed. The Pile Bunker went into its chest, and it flew back out through the broken doors.

"Too hard," Mara said beside him, without looking round. She had one vampire on the floor and was turning to meet a second. "You don’t need to break the arm. You only need to close the door."

"I’ll practice," Donald said.

The fourth and fifth came together. Mara took both. She went between them so close that neither could swing without cutting the other, and her hands moved too fast to follow. Elbow, armpit, neck. Elbow, armpit, neck. Their blood-blades ran off their hands onto the floor in red puddles, and Nyx came down out of the rafters onto the nearest one and sank her claws in. The vampire’s speed went out of it in a rush, and Mara put it on the floor with a single sweep.

Then she stopped.

She stopped in the middle of the floor with her hand raised for the next blow, and didn’t finish it. Her whole body went rigid. On her neck, the two white scars had begun to glow a dull, deep red.

From outside the broken doors, beyond the harbor, a voice came across the water. It wasn’t loud. It didn’t need to be.

"Mara," it said. "You’ve been very rude to my people tonight."

Mara’s feet began to move toward the door. Her face was white, and her teeth were clenched so hard that Donald could hear them, but her feet kept moving, one step and then another, as if someone had tied a rope to her neck and was pulling it in.

"Six nights early," she said through her teeth. "He’s never come early."

The last vampire, the sixth, was standing in the doorway waiting for her with its hand out.

Donald stepped in front of it and put the Pile Bunker through its chest, and it was gone. Then he turned and caught Mara by the shoulders.

She fought him. She was stronger than she looked and she knew every way to break a hold, and for a second he thought she would break his. Then he laid his right hand flat over the two glowing scars on her neck and let Purifying Touch run into them.

Mara cried out. The red light under her skin flared against the white, and smoke rose from the scars, and then the red faded back down to nothing.

She sagged against him, gasping.

[Blood Mark: Suppressed. Duration: 1 hour.]

Out across the water, the voice laughed softly.

"So that’s who you’ve found," it said. "Bring them with you on the blood moon, Mara. I’d like to meet the man who can burn my Mark. And tell the Valkyrie I’m looking forward to finishing what I started."

Then it was gone.

---

Evelyn came down through the skylight a minute later, with the Blood-Mage’s ash still on her boots, and found them sitting on the floor of the hall among the puddles of dead blood, Mara with her back against Donald’s chest and his hand still resting on her neck.

Mara didn’t move away when she saw Evelyn. She sat there breathing, with her eyes closed, until her breathing was slow again.

"An hour," Donald said quietly. "That’s all I can give you each time."

"An hour is more than I’ve had in eight years." Mara opened her eyes and looked up at him, and then at Evelyn. "You’re really going into the court."

"Yes," Evelyn said.

"Then you’ll need me. I know the way in, and I know the way out." She lifted Donald’s hand from her neck, slowly, and held on to it for a moment before she let go. "And you," she said to him. "You hit that vampire like you were trying to knock down a door. If you want to fight Corvin with your hands, you’ve got six days to learn how."

"Will you teach me?"

Mara got to her feet, steadier now, and looked down at him with something that was very nearly a smile.

"Be on this floor at sunrise," she said. "Barefoot."