"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.

My favorite hoodie has been nearly torn off me and the skin on my back has peeled to reveal flesh. Like my father said, sirens are easier to cut underwater so, inadvertently, by softening my fall with water, I also made myself vulnerable. I just wish there was a manual to read so that I could understand what my abilities are and how to use them.

My head hits a rock and, for a second, complete darkness surrounds me. I refuse to let go and continue tumbling through the underbrush and into a tangle of wet dirt, pine needles, and twigs. Small stones and soil mash into my mouth. My left hand is over Hunter's face to protect it from damage, my right hugs his bent legs. My entire body is flattened by the fall and surrounds him on all sides, or so I imagine in my head, because my eyes are still closed. My ears ring. Everything in my body is on fire and I no longer know where we are and when we'll stop moving.

I realize I'm still screaming, that explains my open mouth. I close it, falling silent. We stop rolling. Silence falls down in a hushed hammer, and I'm afraid to move. I'm cradling Hunter's body in an embrace, his back pressed into my stomach, his head on the ground.

Deafened, I can't quite pick up the echo of his burning soul, or his breathing, or the beating of his heart. My fingers are sticky and wet.

Nature itself seems to be unperturbed by our fall, hurrying on its way. A cold whiff of rapidly moving mountain river fills my nostrils. Despite my pain, I smile and take a deep inhale, noting the aroma of moss, passing fish, and evergreen trees.

Unable to wait any longer, I open my eyes.

A huge Douglas fir towers over us in a protective gesture. It's solitary, standing all alone, a long way from the cluster of firs yards away on either side. A silver line of river glistens about twenty yards behind it. It's as much as I can see, peeking above Hunter's head. I can't turn my head to look back, nor can I glance up. In fact, I can't seem to move at all.

Guilt crushes me. I'm alive. Before I descend into the dark tunnel of self-loathing, I hear something through the diminishing ringing in my ears. I stop breathing and tense. There it is again. A flood of elation pulls into instant happiness unlike anything I've felt before.

I can hear the echo of Hunter's soul! He convulses and coughs up blood. Warm liquid trickles down my fingers.

"Oh, my God! Hunter! You're alive, you're alive!" I croak, happy my voice is working. And I laugh, though it comes out in hysterical bursts.

"We didn't die," I say. "We're alive, Hunter. Did you hear me? We're alive."

He breathes in short wheezing gasps and doesn't answer me.

"Are you all right?" I ask again.

Silence is my answer.

I can't move my arms or wiggle my fingers. I'm frozen in the position we landed. My left hand is splayed close to Hunter's face, my right hand on his knees. Nothing works. I can't pinpoint the exact moment when my body stopped melting from an internal fire of pain and succumbed to the freezing numbness. I try to wiggle my toes or move my legs. No luck, I don't feel them at all. Thinking back to Hunter's attempt to cut out my vocal cords on my father's trawler, I realize that it will take my body a while to repair itself, hoping that it actually will. That my skin and muscles will knit together.

Are my bones broken too? It feels like they are—all of them. How long would that take to stitch together? A couple hours, days, weeks? How exactly can I help Hunter if I can't move? I realize I didn't think about this scenario, it wasn't in the plan. The plan was to see him through death and cry my sorrow over his body until I burst. Amazingly, before that, the plan was to make him stop loving me so that he could stop turning into a fully fledged siren hunter; so that his soul would stop burning and he would return to being a normal teenager. So that he could forget me and find himself a normal girl. I would convince Canosa and the other sirens to leave him alone. Him and my father. Because I was planning to fully revive my father's soul, but not to kill him. Splendid. I think I just screwed up on all of these accounts.

A loud thunder cracks in the near distance, sounding precisely like an explosion. It takes me a moment to put it together.

"There goes the bike," I say.

Silence. Hunter doesn't react.

"Hunter? Can you hear me? Can you talk? I can hear you breathing. Can you say something, anything, please? Or just nod to let me know that you heard me?" My voice catches, throat sore from screaming. His hair tickles my nose but I can't tilt my head away. More blood seeps from Hunter and onto my left sleeve. He shakes in a violent fit and is still.

I give up trying to make him talk. "Hey, it's okay. We're alive, and that's all that matters. It was an idiotic thing to do. I'm here, I'm with you. It'll be okay," I whisper.

No response, only shallow wheezing. Hunter takes a deep breath and produces a barely audible, "Fuck."

"What did you say? Oh, God. Oh, God, you can talk. You're alive you're alive you're alive. We didn't die. That was the stupidest thing we've ever done, you hear me? It was fucking retarded. I don't care what you say, but I'm not going to do this, not ever again. It's not our turn to die, okay? Fuck this, fuck suicide. Do you hear me?"

Rapid breathing.

"As long as you don't die on me, you don't have to answer. Just keep breathing, okay? Keep breathing and keep living," I whisper.

A tickling sensation runs through my torso down to my legs. My muscles begin knitting together on their own accord. I feel them mend, limbs tingling. My skin is itchy as if a million red ants bit me all over. Stand aside, creeps, I'll be reborn here any second, pops into my head. It sounds like something Hunter would say.

I rest, happy to feel his warmth in my embrace, and feel my eyelids slowly droop and close completely from weakness. Whatever energy I had left, I expended it on conversing.

How much time goes by, I don't know. Maybe ten minutes, maybe ten hours. The only thing I know is that I'm still broken but repairing myself fast. I dare to flex my fingers. They work, but my hands still can't move. I notice that Hunter's breathing slows down.

No. No-no-no. Don't panic, don't panic. It's okay, it'll be okay. All I can do is breathe into his hair and wait, listening to the faint violin moans of his burning soul, knowing that as long as I can hear it, he's living.

I keep dipping in and out of reality, sensing with some built in acuity that I can now move my arms. Carefully, afraid to hurt Hunter, and in what seems to take an eternity—inch by inch—I pull my left arm from under him, letting him lie on the rocks. After that's done, I prop myself up on my elbow and promptly collapse back onto the ground, hitting my head on the same stone I hit as before and seeing stars.

I close my eyes. Too soon, need to rest more.

I completely lose sense of time and fluctuate between the agony of everything itching inside of me, suppressing the mad urge to scratch it.

I hear souls and snap my eyes open. A hundred feet away or so, a couple of deer step out from behind the trees, no doubt on their way to the river to get a drink of water. They flick their ears, approaching cautiously, sniffing at the air and keeping their distance. Their slender legs click against the stones. Their souls sound like rustling leaves and animal trilling. I clear my throat, thinking whether or not I can lure one in to feast on it. It would do me good. I suppose I could sustain myself on animals alone, come to think of it. Why not? It would take more of them, in terms of quantity, to match one human soul. As if reading my thoughts, they sprint and are gone.

The sun is as bright as it was during our fall, and appears to be in the same position. I'm guessing it's around three in the afternoon. Well, maybe closer to four. I wonder if the ranger decided to pursue us or didn't bother. Did anyone see us sail off the cliff? Has anyone heard the bike explode and called to send a rescue squad our way? I glance about.

The valley is an open, elongated canyon about five hundred feet deep, and we're both in plain view. Although, the gigantic Douglas fir might be a convenient cover, shielding us if people look down. We're in the shade and I wish the sun would move already, because I could use some warming up. From what I can hear, no human souls are within a mile radius.

I try lifting myself again. My arm shakes like crazy as the rocks painfully dig into my elbow. Beads of cold perspiration break out on my forehead and my gills puff up, inflated. Reaching the river to get moisture into my system dominates my every wish. I lick my lips and pause for a few seconds to make sure the dizziness goes away. Slowly, I prop myself up on all shaky fours and gently roll Hunter onto his back, holding his head and laying it down carefully, having my first good look at him since we fell.

I don't want to see what I see.

His face is mush, scraped and bruised and swollen, one bloody mess caked into a mask of pain. His eyes are two slits that are glued shut. His hair appears to have become an old wig from a prop shop that needs to be thrown away; it's matted and greasy and dirty. His clothes are a shredded heap of cotton from another life, the color of mud. I can't see if he suffered any wounds, because he's caked in mud, and I briefly glance down at myself, I am, too. It's dry now and is peeling off me in large chunks as I move about.

I shift my focus to his lower body. His legs are bent; his feet are still in socks, but his sneakers are gone, torn off by our crash. His right arm is limp and his left sticks out at an awkward angle. I touch his cheek and tear my hand away.

It feels like his scream will never end.

"Fuck that hurts don't touch me talking hurts! Oww..." he wails, gradually falling into quiet moaning, occasionally coughing.

"I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry," I mutter, cursing myself for my own stupidity.

Hunter sobs. Tears trace two clear lines on the sides of his filthy face. For a moment, he opens his eyes wide, perhaps from another wave of pain. His bright blue irises are the only two things of clean color, as lovely as the sky. He closes them, whimpering. I decide if I look at his face any longer, I will start sobbing, so I get busy. I squat, ball up the bottom of his sweatshirt, and rip it open in one yank.

"Your ribs look like they're intact, so that's a good thing." I gently hover my hand over his shoulders and stomach, afraid to touch him, eyeing his bright red bruises on either side of his chest, two long oval-shaped areas that must have resulted from me not having enough of a complete enclosure to protect his sides. There are no cuts, however, and I sigh in relief.

"Looks like your arm might be broken. It's twisted at a strange angle. Can you move it?"

I dare to touch it and Hunter wails, then coughs up more blood and stops moving. I hear his smoldering soul dance in his ribcage like a moth at the light, wanting to flee, thrashing, breaking its delicate wings. It cries out to me, begs for mercy.

Terror envelops me.

"No-no-no-no-no. Don't you die on me now!"

I pry open his eyelids, to reveal the whites. His eyes are rolled all the way up. His mouth falls open and the first tendrils of mist curl out. Mist and smoke. There is no time to think. My tears transform into a soft, velvety humming. It drips into a song, creating a stream of calming water, drop by drop, puddle by puddle.

"Look up,

The sky is gray.

Can you see me?

Tell me."

I take his cold hands into mine, lowering my face over his so that our lips almost touch. I sing and I sing and I sing, pouring out my wish to take his pain away. His soul skirts around me and up into the sky, ready to flee his body.

"No!"

His bloodied face turns old, his eyelids falling into their sockets, buried in wrinkles, hollow.

"NO!" I yell at him. "No no no no no!"

I try again.

"Speak to my love,

It won't survive."

My song doesn't seem to be working as it usually does. It comes out ugly, torn and disjointed. But I don't care. I don't want him to die, not now, not after all of this. What else is there to do except to try to bring him back? He's not fully gone yet. I hear his faint breathing, a slow beating of his heart like a flickering light. Now it's on, now it's off. I choke on tears and sing more.

"Did you love me?

Tell me, did you love me."

I call to the mountain, to the river, to the trees and grass. It seems like they sway in sorrow together with me, it seems the ground itself is wailing.

"Memories

Have left me now.

I want to know."

My voice rises and it soon turns into a powerful shriek that bounces off the ravine cliffs, for all to hear. Something shifts in the air from far away, moves in closer with lightning speed, as if all it was waiting for was my location.

Instantly, I know who it is. Canosa. She's not alone. And she's on her way to find me.