Page 2 of Torn

The stars favor this realm. She favors them back, even if the divinities want nothing to do with her.

The tune keeps playing while her board flies. She belts out the lyrics, her performance inaudible to the locals, which is a fair trade considering she sounds like a yodeler with a sore throat. Nonetheless, the skateboard moves with her, dances with her. It rocks to the left and right, synchronizing with her hips and shoulder-shimmies. Her tulle skirt flounces, the spring breeze plays with her NASA T-shirt, her fingerless fishnet gloves tickle her skin, and a few strands of pink have come loose from her sloppy ponytail. She feels merry, so very merry.

That’s the impression Merry gives. That’s the perception.

Hopefully it’s working, but she doesn’t check to make sure. She can’t because the figure behind her would see that. He’d know that she knows.

He’s stalking me again.

Merry wants to lament. She truly had been savoring this joyride a minute ago, a minute before realizing she’s being followed, a minute before registering she’s inhisterritory.

Gracious! Why hadn’t she noticed earlier?

Oh, yes. She’d been drifting aimlessly, overcome by the lurch of mood music, thus detouring into the wrong neighborhood, right into Midnight Park.

Around her, a canopy of boughs shiver above the lush enclave, a nature paseo sprouting along a ramp that’s suspended over the streets. Margined by avenues of twinkling trees, bushes have been stenciled into leafy replicas of constellations, foliage sculptures of Centaurus bucking and Virgo reclining in tufts of grass. There are also giants of Greek mythology such as Atlas, the Titan astronomer forced to balance the sky on his shoulders.

She must have skated up an incline, into the elevated park without realizing it, so lost in the music bopping from the speakers. A new track plays, a euphoric indie mix. Outside of the playlist, her ears pick up what a normal resident wouldn’t be able to, what shouldn’t be audible, especially at this amplified scale. Footfalls speed toward her, too swift for anyone of the real world.

That means he’s close, twenty feet behind. A wicked prickle scurries up her arms, a preview of things to come.

How perilous! How exquisitely dangerous!

It’s a bustling evening, filled with bustling people. She swerves around the corner, her board zinging across the pavement, sweeping around random bodies and faces. Her elbow bleeds through an elder male as she passes him, the mortal clueless to the invisible bluster. Out of habit, she usually avoids surfing right through humans. It’s bad manners.

But there’s no time for etiquette. Not when a villain is on her tail, the only one in this immediate area who can see her, and vice versa.

Up ahead is the Fountain of Aquarius, illuminated in a gradient of purple and rising three levels to where a tide of water spills from a jug. Focusing on the landmark, she thinks exhilarating thoughts because it’s better than being scared.

She locates the perfect soundtrack to this moment and turns up the volume, the lyrics and inflections shifting from dulcet to astringent. Then she takes off, her sneakers kicking against the cement and spurring the board, the wheels licking concrete. Beyond the headphones, the pounding of boots behind her confirms everything, as does the twang of a bowstring.

Alas, fear wins out. Merry zooms around bystanders and uses the momentum to vault, the skateboard spiraling to avoid a flying arrow. The universe whirls, the planets churning in her vision. The wheels smack the fountain’s first level just as her head cranes sideways, and she spots him.

An archer barrels her way, nocking more arrows to his longbow. It takes only a blink to identify the corona of blond waves packed around his face and the sharp nails extending from his fingertips like blades.

Malice.

In that leather sweater, he can pass for a rockstar, despite having the moral compass of a nocturnal serial killer. The nemesis raises his weapon and croons like a high-voltage hornet, “Bye-bye, Merry.”

There’s a release, a whiz from which she skids around the fountain and catapults sideways. Angling her body, she inverts the board, flipping upside down to dodge the shot.

Merry slams onto the next level. Her ponytail whips around, the pastel rainbow of her skirt making her a delicate target in the dark.

His arrows are incapable of delivering death blows—only archery wielded by members of the Fate Court have that power—but the impact will knock her off the skateboard. It’ll strike hard, which will have a painful effect and punt her to the ground, crippling her long enough for him to catch up and do permanent, hands-on damage.

Malice’s arrow misses by a fraction, impaling the Aphrodite hedge, piercing the goddess’s heart. He releases more projectiles, this time targeting the board’s hardware in the hopes of derailing Merry. She whips the skateboard aslant of the park wall, zipping horizontally along the slab, as if anyone can execute this trick for such an extended length of time.

Well, a person can—so long as that person’s inhuman.

Merry lifts off the wall and strikes the fountain’s third level. From here, she locates the city’s center several blocks away. It’s a towering, twinkling arena of trees that surrounds an extravaganza, a place that tosses lights everywhere like a meteor shower.

It’s the Carnival of Stars. And it’s neutral territory.

Merry assesses the drop from Midnight Park to the street level. From behind, Malice grouses her name while bolting in her direction, getting closer. Smoothing over her skirt and upping the bass on her headphones, she reels back and soars.

She rockets into nothingness, gravity sucking her down, down into a funnel.

The star-blessed vehicle crashes in one piece. The landing rattles her teeth as she skitters across a pothole covered in a filigree of overgrown moss. She pivots and halts, the wheels grating against cement, the board slanting and the tail hitting a sidewalk.

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