Free Beautiful Monster-The Exchange by Jeanne Bannon

to figure things out.
    He struggled to his feet, staggering like a newborn colt,
and had to grab the back of a chair to keep from toppling over.
    Boris now stood at the other end of the room in front of
a mirror, sloppily wiping blood off his new face with a rag. He turned and
smiled at Lev. It was Alexei’s smile but somehow different. Lev had never truly
been afraid of his brother, but that smile sent a shiver down his spine. Then
it went out and Boris glared. “Leaving so soon?”
    Lev felt heavy and clumsy as he took a few steps toward
the doorway. Boris beat him there, blocking his way, just as he’d blocked his
brother’s moments ago. A stab of regret pounded through him. He’d let his
brother die—let him be pulled limb from limb! Did he deserve to be with Carly
after what he’d allowed to happen? He’d never killed anyone, but he certainly
felt like a murderer now. He not only let it happen, a part of him also wanted it to.
    That was the old Lev, he told himself, trying to lessen
his anguish. The Lev who was a creature of the night.
    “You have what you want. Just let me go now,” Lev said,
trying to keep the panic from his voice.
    Boris ran a finger along his own jawline, wiping off a
bead of blood, then he slipped his finger into his mouth and sucked. “I like
you,” he said and put an arm around Lev’s shoulder, leading him back into the
room. “Do you not want to hear about what I saw? About what I told you and
Alexei when we were outside?”
    Of course he wanted to know. There was nothing he wanted
more. He’d hoped that once he was whole again, the portal would have opened on
its own, and Carly would have been waiting. But alarm rang in every fiber of
his being. He was about to become Boris’s second course. He’d have to find
another way back to Carly.
    Boris still had an arm clamped around Lev, and though it
was now a smaller, thinner arm, and not the tree trunk Boris had sported, Lev
still felt its crushing strength. There would be no escaping his grip.
    Boris pointed at the air in front of him, seemingly at
nothing. “Do you not see it?”
    Lev shivered as he stared at the spot the man who looked
like his brother was pointing at, but he saw nothing.
    Boris laughed in Alexei’s voice, but there was a bit of
Boris in the sound too. “You would have seen it earlier if you still had eyes
to see with. But there is something still here, a remnant of that…that swirling
ball of light your girlfriend disappeared through. I thought you might like to
see it. I have no use for it and no idea why it remains.”
    Lev squinted and tried harder to catch a glimpse.
    “It is right here.” Boris pointed directly in front of
his own nose. “I am so close, I could pluck it up and squash it.” He made
pincers out of his thumb and pointer and moved his hand over the spot where it
supposedly hovered.
    “No!” Lev screamed, making Boris roar with laughter.
    “Why would you want to be mortal again, stupid man? All
for what, a woman? You traded immortality and your brother’s life for nothing.”
His grin grew until it filled his face.
    Lev barreled into him, managing to shove him only a few
inches.
    Boris shot out a hand and wrapped it around Lev’s
throat, squeezing and lifting until his feet dangled a foot from the floor. He
could hardly draw a breath. Boris’s fangs slipped from his gums, and Lev knew
they would soon plunge into his throat. His only hope was Boris would kill him
instead of turn him back into a creature of the night.
    “I am not that nice, Lev. I like you too much to kill
you. You are as beautiful as your brother.” He laughed. “I should say, you are
as beautiful as I am now. I shall like to have you around.”
    Lev dropped to the floor, his back slamming against a
wall. He sat stunned for a few seconds before Boris came at him again. He
hardly felt a thing as his fangs hit their mark.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN
     
     
    Then Lev saw it. The thing Boris had pointed at moments
ago and had