“That’s Mistress BellaDonna,” said Vivian in surprise, looking between the two women sitting across the table from her. “I didn’t know she was attending.”

“Who?” asked Julia, turning and looking at the strikingly beautiful woman in flowing robes of green and gold, who apparently just made a dramatic entrance into the registration area.

“Mistress BellaDonna,” said Victoria in almost reverent tones. “She was into hypno domination before anyone else, I think.”

“I thought she was just a legend,” replied Julia.

“No legend, but she is legendary,” said Vivian.

“Be careful around her,” said Victoria. “She loves to poach subs from other Doms, although its usually temporary. She has an amazing skill at learning their triggers and using them relentlessly.”

Julia didn’t immediately reply, noting that Mistress BellaDonna was scanning the room, her emerald predatory gaze resting on several men in turn, her sub Roger being one of them. Julia felt a twinge of jealousy at the sight of the striking beauty, who possessed a handsome face and curvaceous figure that would show no sign of age for decades. “That one doesn’t need to hypnotize men to dominate them, she does it naturally,” thought Julia as she watched a number of the male attendees clustering around her obviously fall under the raven-haired woman’s charismatic spell.

“Well, she’s not getting her claws into Roger,” she said finally, determined to protect what was rightfully given to her. “I won’t let her.” She reached across and stroked the back of her companion’s neck, and Roger immediately closed his eyes. “Ignore her, my pet, you’re mine, and that’s just the way you love it, don’t you?”

“Yes, mistress,” came the soft reply.

“Good boy.”

Whatever her flaws, Julia was forced to admit that Mistress BellaDonna was an excellent hypnotist, although her methods and style fit no training she had ever encountered. Or perhaps it was many different styles, all of their best points collected together into a mystifying and powerful whole. Certainly her considerable personal charisma and her impressive physical charms helped, not to mention a highly developed theatrical style and a certain sensual reputation that the rumor network had spread throughout the convention attendees.

Mistress BellaDonna was the center of attention during the lunch break Saturday afternoon, showing off her hypnotic skills to a large number of appreciative spectators. In quick succession, she demonstrated several different induction techniques on a number of eager volunteers. The techniques ranged from a non verbal relaxation induction that involved her passing her hands over the body of her subject to a stereotypical eye fixation induction, un stereotypically done with several subjects at once, capturing their gaze one by one, telling them to close their eyes and remember the very memorable image of her emerald eyes in their imagination.

One of the people watching, whom Julia remembered being a volunteer for Mistress BellaDonna’s demonstration of erotic inductions earlier that morning at the hypno domination panel, became an unwitting (and maybe unwilling) demonstration subject as Mistress BellaDonna called his name, then when she got his attention, simply snapped her fingers before his eyes and said “sleep.” He didn’t appear tranced, until she waved her hand before his eyes with no response: he was in such a deep trance that his eyes were still open but his mind was simply still. She stepped in front of him and passed her hand before his eyes, saying “deeper ... deeper ... deeper” and he rapidly collapsed into her waiting arms. As she spoke softly into his ear, too softly for anyone else to hear, a broad smile of pleasure appeared on his face over her shoulder. When she snapped her fingers to awaken him, he blushed furiously and excused himself to back his way into the clustered crowd as the audience stared in confusion or chuckled in amusement.

But during all through the demonstration, Julia noticed Mistress BellaDonna covertly scanning the crowd, her gaze at times focusing on two or three men in particular: one of them was Roger.

Julia and Roger were waiting for the elevator. When it arrived and the door opened, Julia entered, but noticed that something had drawn Roger’s attention: it was the sounds of small golden bells announcing Mistress BellaDonna’s entrance into the small access area for the three elevators. Julia started to exit, only to find the elevator doors had quickly closed just far enough to prevent her from leaving, and she was momentarily frightened when they did not stop closing when she put her hand out to stop them. She pulled her hand back automatically and the doors slid shut. The last thing she saw before the elevator doors closed was Mistress BellaDonna approaching Roger, holding her hand before his eyes: just as the doors shut, she saw Mistress BellaDonna’s hand pass across Roger’s eyes as her compelling voice said “sleep, my pet.”

Julia jammed her finger into the “Door Open” button but the elevator lurched into motion, heading up. She pressed the button for the next floor, and fortunately the elevator stopped there, She got off and pushed the elevator call button, all the time cursing the engineer who designed the hotel for not adding any connecting stairways from the hotel room floors to the convention area, something she had found annoying before and now positively infuriating. The wait for the elevator was excruciating for all its short time, but by the time it came and she rode it down to the second floor, Mistress BellaDonna and Roger were nowhere to be seen.

Julia finally found them together outside, returning from the parking garage and the shopping center beyond. She was leading him along, as he carried several sacks and bags, trailing her hand behind her as if she were holding an invisible leash, which was visible only to his entranced mind. That the image was one of her favorite tricks to use with Roger, and to see Mistress BellaDonna using it infuriated her.

She ran to take Roger by the shoulders, throwing her jacket over his head without understanding why. Turning to his captor, she said “I challenge you for possession of Roger.

“I challenge you by the Old Ways.”

What made her say those words was a mystery but there was a feeling of correctness, as if BellaDonna’s elegant mannerisms hearkened back to an earlier time of genteel politeness masking a terrible violence, which Julia felt compelled to match. She also felt this was the only way to break her rival’s hold over her Roger.

Mistress BellaDonna regarded Julia with the same calculating stare she gave everyone, but now there was a hint of amusement in the arch of her eyebrows and a shadow of pleasure in the curl of her lips. “By the Old Ways, you say? So be it.

“But not here. Someplace private.”

Mistress BellaDonna led them both to a suite on the top floor of the hotel, a palatial room befitting her bearing.

“I have not had such a challenge in ages, and I thought such lore lost and forgotten, but you have challenged by the Old Ways and I am obliged to respond.”

“What have I got myself into?” thought Julia.

“You understand that if you fail, you will not only lose your sub, you will become my hypnotized sub as well, totally and equally and forever as entranced and obedient as he.”

Julia nodded, licking her lips.“Let’s do this.”

“I have already begun,” Mistress BellaDonna replied, indulgently. Indeed, she was already starting to make several fluid mesmerizing gestures toward Julia, her green eyes growing larger and larger until they became the focus of Julia’s vision. She didn’t speak in words, but she didn’t need to, crooning a soft musical note gently that rose and fell

Julia felt BellaDonna’s power creep into her mind like silent fog. With each flowing gesture, Julia found herself slowly stepping forward, until she was standing directly before her opponent. Her breathing quickly fell into time with BellaDonna’s song and her eyes started watering and blinking heavily, for all that she could not look away from BellaDonna’s cat like gaze. Part of her mind in growing horror recognized the signs of impending trance: she wondered that if in agreeing to this challenge she also agreed to being hypnotized, and tried unsuccessfully to resist. This was no induction Julia had ever seen before: there was nothing in her extensive training and experience to compare it to, not even the most extreme form of NLP.

“She’s not ... I’m not ... She can’t be ... I can’t be ...”

But it was. Mistress BellaDonna’s power was unmistakable and irresistible and soon Julia’s thoughts stilled, her mind empty for the sight of two wicked green eyes and the sound of whispers too faint to be understood.

What seemed like full awareness returned to Julia after moments unknown: she felt no different, saw nothing different, and she wondered what Mistress BellaDonna had done to her while she was entranced.

“Now it begins,” said Mistress BellaDonna in ritual tones. “Your task is merely to keep your man from coming to me: if you can keep him to yourself, through all trials, then he is yours. Otherwise he and you both must pay the forfeit.”

“Is that all?” thought Julia, looking across the width of the room at her opponent, and the room seemed to shift. Suddenly they were outdoors, standing in a forest glade lit with brilliant moonlight. Surrounding them was a ring of pale growths, several yards in diameter, and floating in the air were swiftly moving points of brilliantly colored light.

“Roger, come to me,” said Mistress BellaDonna.

She looked at Roger beside her. He was starting to take a hesitant step in Mistress BellaDonna’s direction, and Julia stepped in front of him and wrapped her arms around him. At the same time, she heard Mistress BellaDonna say a word that went completely past her conscious mind.

Except it wasn’t Roger in her arms: what she held was a large porcupine, and its spines pierced her fingers.

“Ouch!”

Julia looked down at the drops of blood on her fingers. “This can’t be an illusion,” she thought; “no one had taken me this deep before, and I thought I could never get this deep.” She knew that being able to manifest positive or negative illusions was reserved for that small percentage of the population that could enter deep trance, and she thought herself incapable of that, unless Mistress BellaDonna was an even better hypnotist than even Julia gave her credit for.

The porcupine dropped from Julia’s arms and started scampering across the room. She threw herself to the ground to block its movement, and, at another unheard word from Mistress BellaDonna, it became a serpent, hissing its defiance toward her. She grabbed its head and, as she stood, felt its body wrap itself tightly around her chest and begin squeezing. With her free hand, she pushed the coils away and stepped free of them.

Another unheard word, and the head of the serpent became a flaming ball, and Julia felt the burns on her hands and resolved to ignore them. Still another word, and the flaming ball became a falcon, whose cruel claws dug into her arms, and Julia responded with equal fierceness.

For several minutes, it was the same: Mistress BellaDonna would say a word that Julia heard but did not hear, and Roger would change again, always to something more dangerous. But every time, Julia persevered, holding the memory of Roger in her mind, fighting off the pain, dancing a perverse dance that saw one step forward followed by one step back.

But then there came one more word, longer by far than the others, and Roger changed more drastically than ever before. It was something out of a child’s nightmares, that child being Julia: a combination of horrors from a youth spent watching black&white horror movies on television, late Saturday nights, being deliciously frightened and terrified. But there was nothing delicious here, only plain fear and terror. A tall figure of pure horror, with slimy reptilian skin, hairy insectoid arms, gleaming predator’s fangs and leering, blood shot eyes, its most horrifying feature was a male member of tremendous circumference and almost tenticular length. It was a creature of blind brutality and cunning cruelty, sinister sexuality and wicked wantonness. It looked at Julia as a toy, a plaything for its lusts and wants. Julia almost recoiled in mixed horror and disgust, and in her moment of hesitation, the member wrapped itself around her thigh and started probing. At the same time, its pincers seized her shoulders, now holding her in place, as a long tongue uncoiled from its mouth and coldly licked its way down her jaw and around her neck. It was all she could do to keep from turning away.

On some level, Julia still couldn’t believe what was happening, that it was Roger who was doing these things and not some illusion. Even though they shared an unconventional relationship, they shared a number of conventional feelings, including a deep and abiding affection for each other. While she knew Roger liked rough play on occasion and was on some level enjoying the novelty and forbidden thrill of hypnotically obeying another mistress, Julia knew that he could not know just how much he was hurting her. For her part, she knew that that Roger loved her and needed her, needed the release his submission gave him, the release from the stress of his career: knowing that, she knew how to get through to him.

“Roger, it’s me, Julia,” she began. “Roger, you’re hurting me.”

The creature seemed to hesitate, then continued its assault.

She continued, quickly shifting from pleading to commanding. “Listen to me, listen to your Mistress, Roger, listen and obey.”

Unconsciously, she moved her hand behind the creature’s neck, and it responded by backing off, its tentacle going slack around her.

“Go to sleep, Roger, sleep: sleep now!”

The creature slumped into her arms, except it wasn’t a creature from her nightmares, it was only Roger, smiling his crooked smile that was her reward whenever she tranced him. That was when Julia knew she had won.

“It’s over,” said Julia flatly, holding her dear Roger to her breasts, standing together in Mistress BellaDonna’s suite.

She glared back at Mistress BellaDonna in defiance, the hypnotic hold the enchantress had over her mind fully broken. “You have no more power over me, or him,” she said, and it was true. The drops of blood on her blouse, the bruises around her chest and the burns on her hands all faded away as soon as she realized it, and Roger, too, had stopped moving and was simply holding on to his Mistress for assurance.

Mistress BellaDonna smiled in reply. “Yes, it is over.

“You have won: you may take your sub and go. I will not meddle in your affairs again.”

Julia noted that her smile indicated that she had also won something, if only momentary amusement. Julia didn’t care, she just led Roger by the hand out the door and back to their room.

Mistress BellaDonna’s room was quiet for several moments, then He stepped into the room around the closed door. “You never tire of playing this game, do you, My Queen?”

Mistress BellaDonna bowed before answering. “Not when the players are so amusing to play with, My King and Lord.

“But this time they were most amusing, indeed. Was it Your doing?”

“It was not, but I suspect the hand of Our sweet Puck in this affair.”

“Then he is to be rewarded.”

“And so he shall. But other matters await Us. Come, My Queen, let us hasten to Our Court, where Our subjects await.”

Mistress BellaDonna nodded in compliance, and took his offered arm. Together, they stepped through the closed door and disappeared from mortal sight.