"YEAH!" Hunter's voice echoes into space as he takes his hands off the bike handles and intertwines his fingers with mine. At the same time, I reach out to him. Joined, we spread our arms like wings before the wind tears off our madness feathers. The bike roars, sputters, and falls out from under us, crashing over treetops along the steep incline and smashing everything in its wake, rolling out of sight, leaving a trail of smoke. On inertia, we arch away from the slope just enough to avoid the trees and propel down into the rocky valley. Wind flaps our shirts and Hunter is falling face first, I hover over him. One second passes, and then another. I'm hit with a full-blown panic attack. What the hell are we doing? The air is thin and freezes my guts. The wind, rumbling loudly, tears at me with its fingers and the rush deafens me.
My mind reels with big red pulsing letters forming one word: WRONG!
As if to tell me—wrong way, wrong decision, wrong direction. But it's too late to turn back. Too late for anything at this point. Another five seconds or so and we'll be mush at best, slime at worst, to be scraped off the rocks as our final act of togetherness.
I hyperventilate, my voice caught in my throat by the wind. This is a hundred times worse than jumping off the Aurora Bridge. This is so scary that I think my heart will stop beating and I'll slide into a coma before we hit.
Hunter's fingers clench mine with the force of a corpse in its final death grip, bone-crunching and icy. We tear through the milky fog, our clothes instantly damp, faces teary, eyeballs chilled past the point of hurting. A rather spotty clump of pines is lined up as spikes, ready to puncture our fall. I briefly think about creating a pocket or air to cushion our landing, when the direction of the wind shifts. We hit a dense air mass at the wrong angle and spiral out of control. My thoughts ruthlessly tossed aside, my body takes over and my siren survival instinct kicks in.
I scream.
Desperation passes through my vocal cords and exits at way over one hundred decibels—a battle cry, a death growl, a rebel yell, all combined into one. We're two seconds from hitting the ground when the mist shifts. Droplets appear out of thin air and multiply at an alarming rate. Water condenses around us and wafts down in a river of rain. We're soaked. I forget my promise about seeing Hunter all the way to his death, to make sure he dies peacefully, to wail over his dead body, to explode into nothing. All I want right now is to save him. I don't want him to die. I clench my arms into a tight hold, curl my knees and lift my legs up, twisting in the air, surrounding Hunter with my body like a blanket, my back to the ground, acting as a protective shield.
Crack!
We crash through pines at the very bottom of the incline. Branches snap across my back, their furious hands slapping my face and covering me in a shower of needles. We tumble over and spiral. I lose all sense of direction, closing my eyes and keeping only one goal in mind. Protect Hunter. Protect Hunter. At any cost, protect Hunter.
Thud!
My back lands on the wet ground, softened by all the water. It's like I managed to create a floating sphere of liquid and landed in the middle of it, bursting it apart like a gigantic soap bubble. The ground is covered with minced rock. It bites its sharp teeth into my skin. The spot where I land yields to my moving force, indents, and sends shockwaves around me in circles. A shockwave travels through my spine from the collision; its force seems to break every one of my bones, stretching every muscle to its snapping point. Still, I don't release my arms, pressing them tighter. It's my death grip. It doesn't matter what happens, I won't let Hunter go.
My body bounces up and down like a rubber ball. It feels bruised and shattered but intact, only my skin gets torn due to moisture. Does this mean it's impossible to break a siren apart? Does it mean that because my body is around Hunter's, he won't die? Because, technically, I'm sort of trying to kill him and, if I remember correctly, Canosa told me that sirens can't kill siren hunters by conventional means. Only with a song. I'm confused and stumped, as we continue to roll down the slope toward what must be the river we saw from above.
YOU ARE READING
The Afterlife (Siren Suicides, Book 3)
FantasyAilen Bright is more lost than ever. Her father has betrayed her yet again, but keeps her longing for his love alive with some almost-heartfelt confessions, though few and far between. She and Hunter can never be together without fighting the urge t...
