We already had. It made no difference if I warned us against it when we’d harbored opinions and concerns for weeks, ever since Pierce first noticed the absence of the heartbeat. How could any of us hope to keep our thoughts from running away after that? It could only mean one thing, probably: the death of the clan.
Perhaps I was being a bit morbid.
Who would do it? There were groups out in the world whose existence I never would’ve dreamt of. Like the group who’d blackmailed Carissa into delivering Cash’s blood by kidnapping Tommy. The poor boy had recovered well enough from the ordeal—he was resilient, for sure—but Carissa still woke up screaming at least once a week, reliving the nightmare of finding him gone.
None of us had been aware of that group’s existence until that point. It was one thing to know our blood was potent, special, but another to find out there were others who were just as aware. And willing to stop at nothing to get their hands on it.
Had our original clan fallen prey to them? Or a group like them? Or perhaps they’d been killed flat-out, simply for the fact that they existed? No matter how I warned myself against jumping to conclusions, it didn’t matter. I’d already jumped. I’d practically leaped.
So had they. It didn’t matter how they denied it. We all had ideas about what we would find. No wonder none of us was in any hurry to get started. If the clan was gone, no more, there would be no reason to rush.
And we might be walking straight into our very deaths.