![]() ![]() You're not dying-you just need to breathe. She needed fresh air! She couldn't breathe! Her breath came faster and faster, in shallower gasps. The wood must have warped in the years the hotel had been unoccupied, because she strained and shoved at the recalcitrant window until she was shaking. She got up, turned off the AC and tried to open her window. Maybe just the sheet without the bedspread? She tried to separate the tangle of bedding and finally gave it up as a bad job. There must be something wrong with the climate control in the old hotel-she was too cold without the covers and too hot with them. Willow threw off the tangled covers for the umpteenth time. As he'd told Zombie Jack once, when there was a better-than-average chance that death was imminent: he liked the quiet. If the others had given him any thought at all tonight, they'd probably suppose he was restless-tossing and turning or pacing with nerves. And tomorrow he was going into a hell dimension to put his life on the line-with no superpowers of any kind-to rescue some vampires he'd never really liked in the first place. ![]() He'd become as hard, cold and alien as his new life. There was no longer anything to remind him of his old life as Xander Harris, and so he became Alex. The different stars were the icing on the cake of his new life for Xander. Even the Big and Little Dippers were gone, and in their place was the Southern Cross. They weren't the constellations he'd come to take for granted his whole life. But the thing that made Xander feel like he was on an alien planet wasn't just the lack of pollution and the closeness of the stars, though. Bernie would probably know why everyone rode horses, except when they had stripes. He was just a little guy-maybe five feet two or three inches and a hundred pounds-but the power emanating from him could knock your socks off. Bernie seemed to be really smart and he knew a whole bunch of stuff. He'd never asked, though, because he thought it would make him look stupid-like it was something he should know, but didn't. Xander wondered, not for the first time, why not? They looked just like horses. There were plenty of zebras, but no one seemed to ride them. There were millions of people in Africa, but the industry was noticeably absent, and the vehicles were more often comprised of camels and oxen, rather than Fords and Toyotas. There was a perpetual haze between the stars and the ground in California that came from millions of people, vehicles, and industry all smooshed together in the same small space. They were so clear and bright, and the quality of the air was different. The first night he'd spent under the African stars he'd felt like he was on a different planet. It was like a different world-close, sparkling and alien. ![]() ![]() Xander closed his eyes and pictured that sky as he'd last seen it. Of course, it never really got dark in LA-too much ambient man-made light for that-not like it got dark in Africa, where the sky was a swath of midnight-blue velvet, strewn with stars like diamonds, and so close you felt sure you could reach up and touch it, if you had a mind to. He crossed his left leg over his right at the ankle and stared at the ceiling in the darkened room. He wasn't sure what the filling in it was, but Connor had washed it with bleach and hot water and dried it in a commercial dryer and it hadn't fallen apart, so he guessed he could deal with a few lumps or clumps. He felt the backs of his knuckles pressing down into the pillow. Twenty Chapter Twenty Xander lay on his back with his hands behind his head. ![]()
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