Love & Loss

Chapter 74

Xander's POV:

"Do you think there's an afterlife?"

I slowly raised my head towards where the quiet words came from.

Those were the first words he's said since Doe came by.

Which, from what I assumed by the guards dropping off a lame excuse for breakfast and lunch, was nearly sixteen hours ago.

He hadn't even moved since then.

I couldn't blame him, I barely managed some sleep, and the blood craving forced me into drinking what the guards brought by.

But Nico's fatigue was obvious and he hadn't consumed anything.

His skin was naturally pale even for a vampire because of this.

He had to have been craving blood at this point, but he wasn't taking any.

I knew his instincts would force it into him eventually, but for now, it was a terrible sight to see.

His wings too still stayed, which I knew only added to his exhaustion.

We weren't meant to keep them for more than the night of the blood moon, and it took a lot out of us even then.

I could see the sorrowful, almost expectant look in his eyes as he waited for an answer.

"I don't know," I answered honestly, "I guess I never really thought about it."

I've never really had a reason to.

I know some humans usually believed in some sort of afterlife, but as vampires, the thought only really reached us in our last days.

"Me neither," He admitted, "I remember when I worked at that hospital, the people would always try to comfort each other after someone they were close to died by saying 'They're in a better place' and that "They'd see them again', but I never really understood what they meant by that."

I mulled that over for a second.

Admittedly, I'd never heard that statement.

I'd never even experienced a death until yesterday.

"Do you think it's true?" I asked

He thought for a moment before responding.

"I don't know. Right now, Id like to think so, but I can't imagine anything that could be better than being alive."

Human lives were so fragile. So fragile and so short.

How much death do they see in their lifetime?

"Did she think there was an afterlife?"

He seemed to just barely flinch at the word 'she', clearing his throat before he spoke again.

"We never really discussed it. We never had a reason to."

I took a second to try to decipher what brought him to ask the question to begin with.

Maybe he just wanted some kind of hope that she was okay.

That even in death, even in some sort of possible afterlife, that she was okay.

"But if it was true, she had a family, right?"

I never knew her whole backstory, all I knew was that she wasn't born a pet.

He turned his head, an almost distant look appearing in his eyes

"Yeah. Yeah, she did. She had a sister and her parents," his voice cracked as tears brimmed in his eyes, surprisingly the first time today, "Do you think she's with them now then?"