What if every magical creature you'd ever heard of was real, driven into hiding by an army of violent zealots? This is reality for Sarah Heisen and Porter Collins. Sarah is a sphinx living a life of luxury in her family's mansion. Hidden from all da...
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Chapter Forty Five
(Porter)
The whole world seemed to come to a halt when Mortoph appeared. The wind ceased to blow, and the crickets in the woods stopped chirping. The only sound Porter could hear was the pounding of his own heart, which grew more frantic with every passing second. The air grew even colder, and a layer of frost began to form over the grass below the Master Slayer's feet.
"Well?" Mortoph demanded, looking around impatiently, as if they were all a bunch of misbehaving children. "Answer me!"
Behind him, Porter heard Sarah whimper. He turned around to see her standing with her knees shaking and her fur standing on end. A spark of anger rose up in him, and he turned to look at Mortoph again.
"Yang potion," he answered, trying to bury the fear. He wasn't sure how Mortoph could manipulate their emotions like that, but he knew that is was as much a weapon as anything else he carried. If he could focus through it, he could render that weapon useless.
"I told him everything," Other Porter added with a mad grin.
Mortoph's eyes narrowed. "Did you now? What, exactly, was it you told him?"
"About him," Other Porter answered. "About us... and you!"
The clone started to shake, but he never let his smile fall from his face. Looking from Other Porter to Mortoph, Porter realized he wasn't smiling because he thought the situation was funny— he was smiling because that was the only thing he could do to cover up his terror.
"I told him what you did to him," he went on. "What you did to our parents. How you went into his brain and turned him into me!"
Mortoph's expression turned even darker.
"Is it true?" Porter asked once the clone stopped talking.
Mortoph scowled, but nodded. "Yes, it's true."
To Porter's surprise, this didn't bother him as much as he'd thought it would. He'd already heard it once from Other Porter, Mortoph was just confirming it.
"Then," he stammered, "what about my eyes? Shouldn't they be like Azkular's?"
Mortoph glanced up at the djinn like he was a bug that needed to be stepped on.
"They were," he said, reluctantly. "The eyes are an unavoidable side effect. But, I couldn't pass you off as a Slayer with eyes like those, so I gave you someone else's."
Even if the Repurposement couldn't shock Porter anymore, this could. Suddenly, his entire face felt alien to him, and he had to resist the urge to reach up and feel it. He still had both swords held to Other Porter's neck, and there was no telling what the clone would do if given the chance.
"Unfortunately," Mortoph said, reaching behind him to draw his longsword, "now that you know, I don't have any further use for you."
He held the sword out, the blade so long that it nearly covered the distance between him and the two Porters.
