Dione was not finished with her evil activities for the night yet and decided to make her first formidable move against her cousins as soon as possible after deactivating and dismantling the crystal ball.  She strongly suspected that they somehow obtained her book successfully and felt less secure than ever before.  Moving back to her room, she evenly attached large dark crystals from her special chest to the perimeter of the dresser mirror to prepare her attack.  She wiped the surface of each one, eight in all, with stored tears of hers from a beautiful miniature bottle, and brought them to life with a simple dark blessing.  They glowed a deep red, turning the mirror into an elaborate window and potential portal into Bonnie's home at will.  She could glance across the distance separating them into any room containing a mirror at any given instant and stood, poised to act swiftly.

                About thirty minutes after Bonnie was in bed, the prevailing thoughts of Jack's awful death kept her from falling asleep.  The many flowers and ornamental plants she had outside and inside the house attested to her sensitivity and love of life.  The recollection of his fiery figure moving wildly about repeatedly flashed in her mind, unable to comprehend the constant searing pain he must have felt.  Quickly, she threw off the covers and sprinted into the bathroom to get a glass of water and clear her head.  It was after she washed her face when she noticed something wrong with herself in the cabinet mirror.  

                She was nearly in tears, but her reflection was smiling deviously at her and moving the opposite way she did.  She closed her eyes briefly, thinking at first that the anomaly was caused by her initial confusion and the angle at which she viewed it.  Yet, her position was the same.  When she looked ahead again, more carefully, the image independently moved its hands up to the glass and silently called her.  Reading its lips, it said, "Come to me," while keeping a tantalizing smile.  She showed disbelief but remained curious, slowly putting her hands ahead and against the smooth warm glass.  Then, it got her.

                The glass suddenly distorted, becoming membranous as the image took on Dione's identity, and grabbed each of her arms tight.  She inhaled deep and loud and screamed even louder.  Colleen and Marsha virtually jumped out of their seats and rushed for her after hearing the frightful cry and a glass break.  They charged into the bedroom and searched the bathroom inside of the next
minute but found no sign of her.  Knowing well what pretty well happened, they became scared themselves, exactly according to Dione's diabolical plan.  Their countermeasures would have to be performed sooner than they wished.  

                Bonnie was thrown onto the floor nearly across the room from Dione, with her temporary exaggerated strength, briefly stunned and still very much afraid.  She slowly stood up trembling, and after turning about to see her, whined, "Oh, my God!  Dione!  Please . . . please . . . "

                "Yes, just me!" she replied, with a red glow in her eyes fading, like the crystals to the rear.  "Your god is not here and will not answer your prayers, as always.  He is in some distant galaxy manipulating the fates of . . .  multi-legged cryptozoans or something, and you are now totally mine."

                "What?  What are you going to do with me?"

                "The same thing to your two other spoiled elite companions: put all of you in your proper places to endure a slow death, of coarse.  YOU will even help me do so."

                "N-no!  Please!  I . . . I'm sorry if I hurt you in any way before.  I'll do anything you want.  Just . . . please, let me go,"  she said and stepped backward against the wall.  

                "Ha!  Of coarse you will, but I'm not going to be weak and forgive you like some religious idiot.  I remember well how you three bitches treated me.  Look at the power MY god gives me now."

                Dione held her open hand out to the side and pointed at it, while concentrating and issuing a short mental command in a dead language.  A supernatural ball of glowing energy materialized around it and condensed into a bright white sphere in her palm;  she threw it forward.  The thing struck the wall just to her right and exploded in a burst of brilliant sparks, causing her to turn the other way reflexively and scream.  She likewise threw another energy ball to her left closer, making the shaking woman protect her face and head and scream again -- louder.  

                The powerful sorceress listened and arrogantly smiled as Bonnie began sobbing.  She remained ruthless and said, "I was only playing with you hussies ten years ago, when I let you all live, but not this time.  The game is soon over, and you lose."

                Dione threw a last bigger, more dim energy sphere at her directly.  It struck her in the chest, knocking her backward, but instead of exploding into sparks, it enclosed her in a large transparent bubble.  The wall of it was flexible and slippery, but she merely stuck her finger against it, making the confinement rapidly shrink into a strong glass-like cage, almost doubling her up in a fetal position.  The helpless woman pleaded for mercy and beat her small fists against the inside of it, but her efforts could barely be heard.  Her voice was also distorted greatly, high-pitched and almost unintelligible, like from another dimension.  

                She fixed the bubble cage into a box-shaped holder with open sides securely, preventing her from rolling, and slid her into a corner.  "You'll look like a wonderful pet in there, dear, but I won't let you die yet.  The best is still to come."

                Another much smaller, dark-blue ball was attached to the top of her cell, causing it to soon fill with water, but she did not drown.  Oxygen was strangely replenished each time her lungs expelled a breath; she bobbed up and down and floated about inside to remain trapped.  Her silky dark hair and long filmy nightgown swirling all around made her form appear very ethereal, and her captor watched close with enjoyment shortly, as she expelled shiny bursts of bubbles from her distressed face, while trying to communicate frantically, that disappeared on contact with the inside surface of the sphere.  Like a cat bored with a dead mouse, Dione merely patted the outside of Bonnie's bubble prison and quietly departed the room next.  


Continued to Pt. 6.