The secret war between the Slayers and Mythics is secret no longer. Porter the Slayer and Sarah the sphinx have, through their unlikely love, become the bridge between the human and Mythic races, and together they hope they can find a way to end the...
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AUTHOR'S NOTE: This is the sequel to The Slayer and The Sphinx, so if you haven't read that already, you should do that before reading this.
Chapter One
(Tick)
Tick's wagon bounced over a pothole, throwing the young chimera on his side so that he struck his head on the splintery wooden floor. Picking himself up with a whimper, he pressed his back into the corner and wrapped his tail around his ankles.
The wagon looked like nothing so much as a rolling circus cage, the kind used to display lions and tigers for paying customers. The bars were made of solid iron and placed so closely together that even a child like him couldn't slip through. Who were these people, anyway? At first he'd thought they were Slayers, but that couldn't be true. The Slayers didn't take captives, they just left bodies.
Tick had been in this cage for... how long had it been? He'd lost count sometime after the first week. All he knew for sure was that it had happened three days after Porter had put him on Joseph's back and told them to run.
Joseph... Tick grabbed the tip of his tail with both hands and squeezed as hard as he could. The spineless satyr had bolted at the first sight of these men. Porter wouldn't have done that. He would have fought all of them, even if it still meant being captured afterward. He would never have just abandoned his friends.
"I'll find you, I promise. You just have to wait for me."
Tick trusted him. Porter would never break a promise like that. It was just... how could Tick even be sure he was still alive? The last time he'd seen him, Porter was about to ambush the entire Slayer army. For all he knew, Porter was...
No, he was alive. He was!
"Stop the cars!" someone shouted from outside.
Tick's wagon came to a halt, almost throwing him on his face again. Getting to his feet, he went to the bars and peered outside. Over the past few days they had made it clear that they were in a hurry to be somewhere, though Tick couldn't figure out where they could possibly be going. Even more wagons were lined up in front and behind his, and as far as Tick could tell they all held Mythics just like him. They were avoiding the roads, choosing to travel the long way through the woods instead.
"What's going on?" someone else shouted as Tick sat back down. "Why are we stopping?"
"The guards caught something. It was sneaking around, trying to steal food."
This caught Tick's attention, and he looked up again.
"Huh," one of the men mused. Their voices were getting closer to his cage. "A little scrawny, but it'll do. Throw it in there with the other mutt."
