Chapter 10

Jake nearly jumped off the bed as Beth appeared right next to him, then, managing to control the shakes Beth's arrival gave him, he looked back at Béla.

"You've learned some new tricks!" he exclaimed. He already knew she could teleport. She'd supplied breakfast from the 'fridge, downstairs, without even getting out of bed. 'Where have I seen that before? I remember! It was that dumb TV show. What was it called? Jenie something... '

Jake laughed as he remembered. "Why don't you wiggle your upper lip when you do that? I'll be Darrel and you can be Sam."

"What?" Béla asked, trying to understand the flat, colorless image in Jake's head. Then she laughed, "I remember that, and his name was Darrin, I think. The witch was Samantha, but the real witch was the mother-in-law!"

"What are you talking about?" Beth asked, then mentally linked up with her sister. She laughed and thought into Béla's mind, 'Hey! I have my powers back!'

Images of the pain that Beth had been suffering from only a moment before.

"Wow!" Jake said. He looked at the image Beth was broadcasting. "How come it doesn't hurt you here?"

Beth shrugged her shoulders, drawing Jake's attention to her breasts as they moved. She didn't care why it didn't hurt, she was just grateful that she was free of the pain. 'But not free from ogling men, I see... '

"Well, you two get to know each other," Béla told them. "I have something to do..." Climbing up to the head of the bed, she curled around a couple of pillows and closed her eyes.

"What's she doing?" Jake asked. "Her 'something to do' is to take a nap?"

"She's dream-walking," Beth explained. "It's how we visit people who are too far away to reach physically."

"So ... those times when I was dreaming about her," Jake began. 'My God! She was really here all those times. I thought I was going insane! She could have told me... '

"She did," Beth said, gazing at him unsympathetically. "Sometimes, when she came back from dream-walking with you, she'd cry for hours because of the pain she was causing you. And all because you just wouldn't believe her!

"You humans only believe what you can touch with your hands!" Her voice became more vehement as she spoke. "Your minds are completely dead! All you had to do was believe she was real!" She resisted the temptation to teleport him into the middle of the hot desert that she sensed was outside. 'How long would you last out there with no food, no water! You can't see the heat the sun generates, but it will still cook you!'

"Alright!" Jake cried, "I get it! Stop blasting me with that stuff!

"You think it was easy for me?" Jake said, his voice wavering with emotion. "I would gain her back every night, then I'd lose her again. Each time was as bad as when I lost her in the fire! I couldn't remember what she said! She'd tell me things, things I knew were important, but it would all get jumbled up with losing her every time I woke up!"

He suddenly felt trapped in the images of waking up without Béla beside him and frantically looked at the head of the bed where she lay sleeping. He breathed a sigh of relief. She was still there. 'Thank God!'

Beth sat on the bed, thinking. She understood them both a little better, now. Béla and Jake were like two stones she once had, made from magic metal. Turn them one way and you can't press them together; turn them the other way and you can't pull them apart.

The magical energy that links them to each other destroys the logic that says, 'That isn't possible; you shouldn't be able to do that... '

"You are lifemates," Beth said, quietly. "You will always be linked together. The greatest passion, the most heart-rending anxiety, the most agonizing pain, each of you will cause the other. Even if one of you dies, one will still be linked to the other until you are both dead."

"And then what?" Jake asked, his voice shaking. He wasn't sure he wanted to know and this naked broad was starting to scare the hell out of him.

Beth shrugged again. "I don't know. The Praetor says that a life force can't be destroyed. I have ideas about what happens after the body dies, but I have no certainty. I never actually paid that much attention to dying people to notice where they go. I will continue; of that, I'm certain. I'm strong enough to live outside my body. Maybe we all are..."

"Life everlasting, hum?" Jake asked. He was glad Beth wasn't omnipotent. Even as it was, she was really messing with the way he believed everything worked.

"Do I smell oranges?" Beth asked, sniffing the air.

"Yeah, we were eating some earlier," Jake replied, glad to change the subject. Theological 'discussions' usually upset him thoroughly. In the past, he had discovered that the more illogical and impossible a religious concept was, the more tightly and violently it was defended.

'To question another's beliefs is to threaten the very foundations of that person's life – no matter what it is they believe. No matter how insane or illogical that belief is, it will be vehemently defended. Islam and Judaism defended themselves into radioactive ash.'

"What?" Beth asked, not wanting to believe the images she was receiving from Jake's mind.

The Sinai was where her life had begun, too. Despite her long ago travels across Asia and Europe, her first memories were of the desert and the ancient Sumerians. But the savage Semites, who had invaded and wiped out the innocent Sumerians, had finally managed to destroy themselves in their unreasoning vehemence against all other races and creeds.