Revenant

Chapter 35

Dreyvass. He wanted Kazimierz Dreyvass.

I sat there in my seat, debating whether or not to take a vow of silence for the rest of my life. It seemed lately that whenever I talked to someone – anyone – my life not only got more complicated, it got decidedly worse.

"So that's what this is about? That's what you're planning? Him?" I asked, bleakly.

Moss nodded somberly.

"The 'right hand' of The Hand, as it were... he's who you're after," I said, not making it a question. He nodded a second time, and I nodded back, exhaling through my nose. "And you need me to... what? Settle your affairs for you when you're gone? I can do that, sure."

He gave me a patiently amused smirk, which made me twice as convinced that this poor, hapless bastard had no idea what he was asking.

"He's just a man, Joe," said Moss.

Okay, three times as convinced now....

"No!" I said a little more vehemently than I'd intended, discovering in the process that I had raised a single upturned finger between us for emphasis without meaning to. I lowered it slowly and scouted the room a moment to make sure I hadn't attracted anyone's notice before lowering my voice and trying again. "No, he isn't. You can't think like that. I don't care how careful you've been about everything so far, if you're thinking that Dreyvass is 'just a man' then you're not being nearly careful enough! I mean, yes, huge props for knowing about Chennai and somehow managing to stay alive all these years... I'll give you kudos for that. But this is way different. Just avoiding the Lemnu-ahu is like surviving in a jungle full of tigers using nothing more than your wits. What you're talking about doing is walking up to the biggest, angriest tiger in that jungle and poking it with a stick!"

Moss rolled his eyes slightly while managing to look the slightest bit bored, the sort of dubious expression that people make when they think you're grossly over-exaggerating matters. It made me want to reach over the table and slap him.

"Shall I put it in perspective then?" I asked. "Before I left that organization, I was the caretaker for all of Western Europe. Big place, and nothing went on there without my say-so. Even the council deferred to my decisions regarding what should happen in that area on more than one occasion. I was arguably one of the top ten in that entire outfit, both in rank and reputation. People generally gave me a wide berth, and kept out of my way." I leaned over the table a little bit more to make sure I had his full attention. "And I didn't even look that guy in the eye...."

He frowned as though a little annoyed. "So he's a big, important, scary man. He's still just a man."

Just a man, he says. Yeah. Like how Stevie was 'just a man', one who-

Wait. Holy shit.

Everything I thought I knew had been turned sideways and on its head this past week, and although I'd forced myself to focus most of my attention on Stevie, there was part of me that was quite aware of the fact that I would need time to process all of the implications of what I'd learned. If something like revenants could exist, so could many, many other scary things as well. Werewolves, ghosts, vampires... why not? The possibilities were virtually endless, as far as I knew.

And Dreyvass was legend among The Hand. He'd pulled off both the unthinkable and the impossible, and on a fairly regular basis. What if he was something 'other'? Like Stevie? What if he was-

Nope... uh-uh. Something like that was far too terrifying to even ponder at the moment. I'd consider that angle later. Much, much later. Or maybe even not at all.