Smoke {MJ SLASHFICTION}

Chapter 15

Michael could barely do much more than attempt to breathe evenly through the silk black veil and even that was difficult. He could feel his chest pounding as he was walked through the open hallway and slowly and ceremoniously up the stairs, getting ever closer to the top floor. He had been forced to wear a long black pull over garment that tangled around his feet each time he took a step.

His lip and eye still throbbed from hours earlier when he'd tried to resist being forced to wear the gown and had shoved Evander away from him as his last remaining defence. Their initial tussle had quickly progressed into a fight. A real fight. One that Evander soon won. He too now accompanied Michael on the long treacherous walk into the unknown.

Michael felt tears stinging his eyes.

Everything had happened too fast.

It had felt so surreal when he'd started awake that morning to find the space beside him in the bed empty. He still remembered the wave of panic that went through him once he'd realised that once again, Kane had gone against him and done what he felt was best.

He'd left his side.

After staring at the ceiling for a long while with contempt, he'd picked up the recorder and played their tape over and over again from the night before, hearing Kane's confession of love and cursing it. He hadn't meant it. It was made evident by his actions.

Kane did what Kane wanted, always. Regardless of how it would impact others.

And this time Michael would suffer horribly for not following his first instinct and going along with Evander's program in the first place. He was bitter inside as he was kicked up the steps. He'd gone through all of the unecessary chaos only to come to the same end. All because Kane wanted to save him without really saving him. Yet again, he'd left him, and now here he was.

Evander was wicked. His nice guy act had long since disintegrated into the murkiness of his own troubled spirit. He drank glass after glass of whiskey along the way and threatened Michael in the car throughout their entire journey. Hurling obscenities in his tumultuous moment of imbalance.

Michael discreetly held the swelling bruise against his stomach as he thought back over Evander's mistreatment of him. The hasty way in which he now strolled impatiently behind him, along with two other big burly men who wouldn't crack a smile for love or money.

"You really thought you could escape me?" He'd said. "That guy you were running around with is a strong one I'll give him that, but he's a dead man walking. With any luck Demetrey will staple his balls to the wall someplace nice after he snaps his neck."

His words swirled around Michael's tormented mind.

Still he was forced to continue on, tripping and barely able to see in the dim environment.

Finally, they stopped along a long hallway and the large doors along either side of it appeared to be locked shut. The guards stepped forward to the largest door straight ahead of them and began to unlock it.

Michael swallowed hard before the doors swung open and he was pushed inside.

Nearly everything in the room was red. Red curtains stretched from ceiling to floor, red carpet trailed the path all the way up to a gold and red-looking podium ahead. In the seat, a few feet back from the podium in the shadows sat a smallish figure, dwarfed by the grandiose chair he was sitting in. Four tall men who were disciplined and still, were clad in dark suits and stood along the wall behind him, their hands clutched in front of them in their militant stances.

Evander physically had to push Michael forward when his body locked up and resisted further movement.

He shuddered in the chilly atmosphere when they stepped up to the large gaping square in the middle of the ground between them and the person sitting ahead.