Opening of The Mysterious Ophelia Majestic

Here is the opening section of the story I'm writing. Let me know what you think! I know it seems a little cheesy so keep in mind that the audience is 14-18 year olds. I am open to criticism but please provide suggestions as well.
__________________________________________________________________________________

The Mysterious Ophelia Majestic

In a whirl of white she streaked across the night sky. Her pale, bare feet blurred together as she moved. The pine needles and sticks jutting up from the treetops stabbed into her ankles and calves, but they were mere nuisances compared to the internal anguish she was experiencing. She moved almost at the speed of light. The turn-over time of her feet propelled her forward so quickly that she was invisible to any human looking upwards. But the things chasing her weren’t human. 

She looked up, observing the sky. The number of twinkling stars had diminished, indicating their individual defeats. Her family’s star was still illuminated, but it was much fainter than Calliope’s. The battle between them had intensified, and the faint red line stretching out from her star meant that surrender was near. An increasing amount of color seeped out of her star, and she wanted to catch those dying souls in her hands and cradle them back to life. She could feel their extreme anguish as if she was burning too.

The Lumiere de la Vie’s temperature increased as it sensed how close it was to home. From its spot in her pocket, she could feel its energy seeping into her injured leg.  It desperately wanted her to heal. It yearned for its place in the sky and knew that she was the only person who could take it back. Funny how so small of a object could contain so much power. It held enough energy to keep an entire world alive, but it did not possess the ability to cure a scrawny girl’s fatal leg wound.

Her left leg started to drag a little. If the ball of light wasn’t providing her with strength of mind and endurance, then she would already have tumbled down into the tangle of trees and into the fléche’s open arms. She needed to get higher still, above the layer of fog encircling the dense woods. The clearing of the trees that opened up to the river and the great waterfall was close.

She could feel the blood sloshing up and down in her shoe as she ran. The pain had yet to sink in. Panic and then fear had been the overruling emotions compelling her to start running. Once moving, her entire body went completely numb. But the bite was big, and she had been running for almost an hour now. All she could think about was how she needed the next sneeze to be just as big as the first one, or she would never make it up to the portal in the sky. She desperately wished that the jump would come before she could no longer put pressure on her injured leg. Before the venom spreading through her body completely paralyzed her. How long had Celeste said it took for the fléche’s  poison to spread through the human body? A couple of hours? An hour? The longer she thought about it the more sluggish she felt. So she focused her attention again on the star, trying to send a mental message to her dad to send someone to help. To tell him that the Light of Life could make it back before Calliope conquered their world.  But she didn’t know telepathy; she just knew how to fly. 

The rustlings of the fléches beneath her moving through the trees sent shivers down her spine. She could visualize their long, muscular and clawed arms rapidly swinging from tree to tree. The cackling of their laughter intensified. They were like blood-thirsty hyenas on the prowl.

Her foot was dragging a bit, and kept kicking up dust and the scent of pine from the trees beneath her. She inhaled eagerly, hoping that the dust would make her sneeze so that she could leap from the trees before the clearing. But it had never happened before. All she needed was to feel that dizzy, light feeling in her nose spreading to her forehead in about a minute’s time. Why did she always sneeze at that specific place? It was like something deep inside of her felt the magnetic pull from the star. After all, it was her family’s star.

 He was one of them.

The truth kept repeating itself over and over again in her mind. Celeste had warned her to keep hidden and to let no one know of her whereabouts but Sophie. But she had trusted Max too. Perhaps more than she had trusted Sophie. He was beneath her now in the trees, moving in the mass of brown and green bodies trying to catch her. Remembering the blurred image of him transferring into one of them caused vomit to build up in her throat. She tripped over a twig jutting off one of the treetops and almost fell face first into the live darkness below. Moving her arms up and down quickly like she was sprinting in place she remained in the air but animalistic laughter echoed out of the woods and burned her ears. She faintly heard him calling out her name. It sounded so tender, like he was his old self.

 It had happened so suddenly. One moment they were lying together in the cavern and then he had vanished. She had been wrapped in his muscular arms, damp from the sweat created by the fire burning gently in front of them. He was breathing French into her ear. The melodic sound of the words sent her into a dream-like state. When she listened to him she felt just like when she gazed into those liquid blue eyes. The falling sensation would take over. Her entire body would go numb.

“They will never find us, Fee.  Notre amour est comme un mur invisible et indestructible.  We are safe here.”

Our love is like an invisible and indestructible wall. Those tender words, like a spell, froze her entire body. She was a fly so wound up in the enemy’s web that her wings were being crushed. Obviously he had known this and preyed upon her even more.

And now she was running for her life. The pain was just becoming tangible and the shrieking of the fléches beneath her was becoming louder. They could smell the blood and her fear.

Up ahead she saw the clearing. Her cracked lips ached as they formed into a small smile. She could taste blood and smell it all over her body. But that didn’t matter. She was going to make it. The final tree that she always leapt from had the top cut off so that it formed a great human-catapult launch.  It was just feet in front of her. With a jump that sent a shiver of pain from her foot through the rest of her body, she landed on that tree.

 But then she hesitated. She had caught a glimpse of the sparkle from the waterfall descending into the moonlit pool far below her and recalled a time when she had been happy.  Closing her eyes she could envision their two pale shapes, running across the sandy beach and diving into the cool water. She recalled opening her eyes under the water and at the same moment feeling his cold lips press against her own. Later he had said her eyes had looked like orbs of fire under the blanket of water. He had never seen anything so beautiful.

The dark blue of her eyes welled with tears and she felt a sob forming in her parched throat. She turned back the way she had come and looked down at the rustling leaves. The fléches would be on her in seconds, tearing her apart limb by limb. Through her matted, dark hair dispersed across her face she could see their dark shadows moving in close. There was nothing she could do to turn back time.

Whirling back towards her destination, she squinted hard at the star and felt the sneeze come. Mustering all of her strength and swallowing back pain, she jumped from the tree. Her body started to spin and she was shooting upwards. The distance between herself and the beasts was increasing by the second. The star grew brighter and brighter. The window was near.

Agony shot through the bottom of her foot as claws dug through the skin and then clutched her wounded foot. She was being pulled back down to Earth. Down to death. The last thing she remembered was seeing the red eyes with the gold rims, and then all went black as pain consumed her.