The Pulse (19 page)

They entered an area that looked like a cathedral. Mason looked up at the arches in the ceiling. Stone pillars surrounded them. “This place is amazing.”

“There’s a whole bunch of different sections,” Emily said. “I wonder if the art is still here?”

Walking through, they came across a huge tapestry hung on a stone wall. It was of a unicorn in a corralled area. “That fence is pretty low,” Mason said, pointing to the corral. “I bet that unicorn could jump over it if he wanted to.”

“Maybe he likes being there. Or, maybe it makes him feel safe.” She peered closer to the tapestry. “Is the unicorn wounded?”

Mason pointed to the woven tree depicted above the animal in the tapestry. “Pomegranates are dripping on him. The unicorn’s fine,” he said, laughing.

“You know,” she said, “if we’re going to sleep here, we need to build a fire where it can’t hurt any of the art.”

“Of course,” Mason said, slightly offended. He may have been a convict but that didn’t mean he couldn’t appreciate the value of art. He was glad vandals hadn’t destroyed the place.

Emily turned and looked up at him, but then her expression changed. Her mouth dropped open in surprise as he heard something whiz past his ear.

Something—a rock?—hit Emily in the face, causing a burst of blood.

She screamed and grabbed her face as Mason whirled around, his finger on the trigger of his rifle. Rocks continued to fly, one hitting him hard in the shoulder

An old man stood his ground, pelting rocks with the ferocity of a cornered animal.

Mason lifted his weapon. “I’ll shoot!” he shouted.

The old man didn’t listen, instead, he charged forward, hefting something in his hand, a club of some sort. He threw it, probably aiming for Mason, but it clattered past him, ricocheting off of Emily’s leg. Her scream echoed in the chamber.

Mason pulled the trigger. The old man flew backward from the force of the bullet, a surprised look crossing his face. Emily screamed again, covering her ears at the sound of the shot.

He looked around, keeping his rifle up. If the old man had any friends, Mason didn’t want to find out the hard way. Emily had fallen silent. “Emily?”

She didn’t respond. Mason knelt by her side. “Are you okay?”

She held her face, blood seeping between her fingers, and didn’t answer him. Mason pulled her hand away from her face to look at the damage.

All he could see was blood. “Emily, come on, let’s clean you up.”

She pulled out of his grasp angrily. Was she in shock? Was she really that injured?

She shook her head, her eyes blazing. “Get away from me.”

Mason stood, confused. He looked over at the fallen old man who attacked them. Poor guy—he was probably the reason The Cloisters hadn’t been desecrated. If only Mason hadn’t needed to shoot him. But he’d do it again in a heartbeat if it meant protecting Emily.

“Let’s go to the other side of the building,” he suggested, “so we’re not sleeping with a corpse.”

“I can’t believe you… killed him. You just… shot him. You didn’t even think about it.”

Mason shook his head in surprise. “He attacked you, I had no choice.”

She didn’t respond.

“Emily, I’m going to get you some water and you’re going to wash off that blood. You’re the nurse, not me, so you need to figure out how badly he hurt you.”

Emily shook her head, avoiding his gaze. “Just leave.”

This was ridiculous. She had to be under some kind of emotional trauma from being attacked. She got hit in the face with a rock—what if she had a concussion?

Mason couldn’t leave her bleeding and alone with a corpse while she was so upset. And he had no way of knowing if the dead old man had companions who might be a further danger to her.

Mason stood over Emily, staring down at her. She looked so tiny, curled on the marble floor like that, still holding her face in her hands. The blood flow seemed to have stopped, but then again, what did he know. He needed her to look at it herself. “Emily, I’m not asking. Get up.”

She looked up at him now in anger, finally acknowledging his presence, but she refused to get up.

“I’m bigger than you,” he said calmly, “and don’t think I won’t use that to my advantage if I think it will protect you. If you don’t get up, I’m carrying you, and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

At this, Emily screamed, a howl of anger that shocked him with its intensity. “Fuck you, Mason!”

Mason picked her up, holding her easily even as she swung her arms and legs in anger. Her sudden fear toward him couldn’t be real, could it? He was only trying to help her.

The thought that Emily would seriously want him to leave and not stay with her, protect her, at least until she got someplace safe, made him feel all mixed up inside. On one hand, he’d never asked to be burdened with the responsibility of protecting this woman. On the other hand, now that he had the mission it felt wrong to give it up before she was truly safe.

What if something happened to her? Even seeing her get attacked, seeing her now, with blood on her face, got him so upset… and scared. If he was honest with himself, then yes, he felt scared. As stubborn as Emily was, she’d started to grow on him. He didn’t want anything to happen to her.

And he wasn’t ready to not be around her—at least for now. He’d been a loner his whole life, so he imagined he would die that way too. But for the time being, her star was hitched to his wagon—whether she liked it or not.

Judging by the way she carried on, at the moment she most definitely did not like it.

Even as she pounded his chest with her fists, getting blood on his shirt, he noticed how beautiful The Cloisters looked. His footsteps down the stone hallway were loud, echoing in the high, arched ceilings.

There was a garden in the middle of the building, in a courtyard of some sort. He carried her out into the chilly night air, setting her down at the edge of a stone fountain with a large cross on top of it.

She made no move to run away.

“I’m worried about you, Em,” he said. “Can I wash your face?”

She didn’t answer, but she didn’t say no.

He reached into his pocket and found a relatively clean handkerchief made out of a piece of an old T-shirt. Dipping it in the freezing-cold water, he tried to clean it a bit before getting it wet again and wiping it over her face carefully.

She winced. And she still wouldn’t look him in the eye.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “Do you want to do it?”

She shook her head. “I’d need a mirror. You do it. How bad is it?” As she asked, she reached up and carefully touched her face, lightly tapping along her face and around her eyes. “I don’t think I broke any bones, which is like a miracle. I’ll probably have one hell of a black eye, if I don’t already. Does it look awful?”

Mason was so happy she was talking to him again he forgot to lie to spare her feelings. “You look like you were attacked. Which you were.” Gently, he finished wiping off the last of the blood.

“Yeah.” She fell quiet again.

“I had to kill that man, Emily. I’m not a murderer. Well… it’s not like I do it for sport. It was self-defense. To protect you.”

“You couldn’t punch him out or something? Why shoot him?”

“He charged us. He’d already really hurt you, and I wasn’t about to take any chances. I’m sorry you feel I overreacted, but it was a split-second decision I had to make.”

She huffed. “An overreaction. So that’s what we’re calling murder these days? Nice.”

Mason shook his head. “I’m going to check the traps I set for food, and while I’m gone you need to hang on to your gun and stay put.”

“There’s a medieval garden here, you know,” she said, as if she hadn’t heard him. The fragile skin below her eye was already blossoming into a dark bruise. “I’ll find us something in case the traps don’t work out.”

He wanted her to stay put and stay safe, but he doubted she’d listen anyway. Sighing, he nodded. “I’ll meet you in the garden in twenty minutes. Don’t shoot me when I come in—wait till you see what you’re shooting at.”

As he walked away, he heard her grumble, “If I’m still here when you get back.”

Emily touched her
face gingerly, wincing at the pain. Damn old man had come out of nowhere. It had been a terrifying experience, being pelted with rocks. She could have been stoned to death.

But when Mason shot the man
 . . . She shuddered, remembering the loud bang echoing through The Cloisters. What had she expected? Before the Pulse, he’d been locked up. A convicted murderer. Just because she was spending all this time with him, sleeping with him, didn’t change who he truly was. What was the old saying? A leopard couldn’t change its spots.

And now he had killed again, so easily. Emily held the damp cloth to her bruised eye. The cold wetness had already warmed against her body heat. She dipped it into the fountain once more, not bothering to wring it out. Instead, she let the rivulets of cool water drip down her face as she pressed the cloth to her face. Maybe she could ward off some of the swelling.

The pain in her face was nothing compared to the pain she felt inside, the stab of guilt she felt every time she thought about killing Andrews, no matter how much he deserved it. Why didn’t Mason feel the same way about the old man? Especially since the old man probably didn’t even deserve to die—not like Andrews did, anyway.

The image of Andrews on the floor, covered in blood, melded together in her mind with the image of the old man shot dead.

Pull yourself together, Emily.

For the time being at least, Mason wasn’t going anywhere. He made that perfectly clear. All that strength, all that power—he’d used it on her without a second thought, picking her up in his arms and carrying her around like a doll. Before the Pulse, men had respected the fact that she was smaller than them, and didn’t manhandle her just because they could. That wasn’t the case anymore. Her punches and kicks hadn’t deterred him a bit.

And that was scary as well.

Emily walked through The Cloisters to the medieval garden. She remembered it clearly from her childhood field trip, simply because the idea that weeds were grown on purpose and eaten interested her.

Now, the paved floor of the garden was cracked, weeds and plants growing up between the bricks, the garden completely chaotic and unkempt. Fortunately the plants were hardy, and most of them were edible. Emily started gathering the plants for a salad, the moonlight making the leaves in her hands seem to shimmer.

She couldn’t stay with Mason, not if he really was a cold-blooded killer.

But he protected you.

She nudged the little voice in the back of her mind away, trying to stay rational. If she let her feelings into this, she’d be lost. His broad shoulders, muscular chest, and incredible blue eyes made her go crazy with lust, true. And he made her come harder than she ever had before in her life.

Having him with her to protect her was what she wanted, though, right? Emily realized she had never stopped to really think about what that actually meant, just like she’d never stopped to think about what it actually meant to walk, on foot, out of New York.

With Mason as her bodyguard, people might die. People did die.

Could she live with that?

Mason
walked carefully through the grounds outside The Cloisters, grateful for the moonlit night. He’d have to make a fire for them, both for warmth and to cook the squirrel he’d caught. It was a skinny little thing, but better than nothing.

“Emily?” he called, not wanting to startle her and wind up dead from a misplaced bullet. Although, the way Emily had been acting, he’d have to wonder if she wouldn’t try to shoot him on purpose. She seemed horrified he’d killed a man to protect her.

“Over here,” she replied. She came in from the garden, her shirt up, holding a whole bunch of what looked like weeds. Her flat white belly shone above her waistband, and his cock stirred. “I got enough for breakfast tomorrow too.”

He held up his skinny dead squirrel. “Great,” he said. “We can make stew. I’ll get a fire going. I walked through a beautiful chapel on the way here—we can sleep there tonight. I figure if we put stones around to keep the fire contained we can make a small one for warmth and cooking.”

Emily nodded, but she still seemed distant.

He had really scared her, it seemed. What could he do to reassure her?

Emily wouldn’t sit
next to him by the fire. Mason skinned and boned the squirrel, and Emily put everything to boil with the plants in their pot. Well, it was
his
pot. He’d started to think of his things as belonging to her too.

“Emily, you’re being…” He trailed off. He wanted to say ridiculous. Or even crazy. But even he had enough wits to know when you want a woman to forgive you, the last thing you do is call her crazy.

“I think,” she said softly, the flames making shadows jump across her face, still beautiful despite the swollen cheekbone and black eye, “I think I’m in over my head.”

Mason looked at her. At least she was talking to him now. “What do you mean?”

“I didn’t think it through, what it meant when I asked you to come with me, to protect me. I didn’t think it through and now a man is dead.”