The last of the Poison Oaks are as good as dead. Dunne, Kitty, Gowdy—they don't have a chance. We're ready and waiting for them.
Knox, our on-camera bait, squirms and flops like a fish on the sand. I coach him from off to one side, just out of the shot. Weed and his dozen henchmen and brides surround the cave exit—the Willow family mausoleum—with guns drawn, itching to open fire.
It'll be a massacre. It'll be so brief, it's almost a shame. Almost anticlimactic.
But my family will be avenged. The Poison Oak threat to America will be vanquished for once and for all. And New Justice will be free—just as soon as the dust clears and I kill Jeremiah Weed.
As I look over at him, he whips an arm in the air. It's a signal to his troops, and they tense up at once in response.
My own heart beats faster as the moment of truth races toward us. I've waited so long and worked so hard to get here...called into play all my skills, made terrible sacrifices. Like all warpaths, my journey has changed me in unexpected ways—made me stronger, harder, darker. And now the end is in sight.
I pray that God will bless me with the power to finish this. That He will guide my hand as I strike down my enemy with the holy art of Sendodansu'dinegaan, the clawed death dance of my Apache and Ninja mentors. That He will hurry the dark souls into deepest Hell as soon as I heave them through the veil.
That He will forgive me for the blood I am about to spill.
Something thuds and crashes inside the mausoleum. As I watch the marble door, waiting for the enemy to emerge, I am revisited by the vision of the bloody corpses in the church.
Unseeing eyes stare in my direction from the crowded pews. Puddles of blood reflect diadems of flickering candlelight. A crimson question mark combined with a crucifix is painted on the wall.
Amish Amos comes to mind. I don't see him among the corpses. For the first time, I wonder if the reason I don't see him is that he's part of me.
If it's possible for Knox to exist within Quincy, couldn't Amos live within me? But if so, how did he get there? And how can he survive my killing ways when the act of murder is anathema to his people?
For now, I know, it must not matter. I can't let it, not when there's work to be done.
Kill now, ask questions later.
The mausoleum's marble door inches open...then stops. I am so intent on watching it, I don't at first notice that Knox is no longer writhing and moaning on the ground.
I don't notice until his hammy hands have clamped around my throat.