All Your Fates: Bonus Chapters

SPECIAL PREVIEW OF CHAPTER ONE PART THREE (SIDEWAYS STORY)

Emma's POV

I'm in a country.

It doesn't matter where and I won't tell you.

Safer for me that way.

Safer for you.

Suffice to say, I'm no longer on the continent I was.

That's putting the expression mildly.

At one point I was in South America.

That much I will say.

Which South America...well...I don't know if even I can explain it.

I was on a quest.

To find my fate.

Although Gran kept insisting it was impossible. I've been writing to her. Letting her know I'm safe.

Whenever/wherever snail mail was a remote...viable option.

But I had an idea. An idea that would help tell my fortune. Several in fact.

Which involved, I'll admit, "a little" Voodoo. A little "Alchemy."

Perhaps the summoning of the dead.

And eight crystal balls.

Like the eyes of a spider refracting back at me.

Imagine me in the small dark parlour of the dark Latin gypsy (out of place and out of time): a room full of chintzy crushed eggplant hued velvet curtains fringed with a gold thick twined hem, and black glittering tablecloths reflecting the glare of the twinkling neon sign outside.

The old haggard swarthy toothless woman promises she will read my fortune...for a price...despite my insistence it is highly unlikely she will be able to. But despite hearing of the tale of my woe: being born without fate, she struck me a bargain in her thick rolling of the tongue: "If I can summon the fortune of even one of your fates, then you pay. For all of eight fortunes whether they are told...or not."

I glanced at the eight crystal balls forming a circle on the table that she set up in advance of my coming.

Because I had an appointment. Not because of being psychic, I snickered to myself.

"And if you see not one. Not one fate, I don't pay a thing?" I clarified. You can never leave room for negotiation for after the fact.

She nodded and we began.

"Lay your hands on the table," she rolled in a thick toothless slur, and tapped her nails that curled in long twisted hideous growths from lack of trimming in years and years. Ten translucent keratin tendrils.

I flattened my palms on the table. The texture of the cloth was coarse from the glitter that reflected the pulsating red flashes from the neon sign outside the window.

"Now....breathe," she said in a husky whisper that almost lulled me to relaxed exhalation.

As I began to breathe the deeply, with the pulse of the neon sign, the lights began to dim unbidden and I tried not to distract my thoughts with the obvious gimmick...keeping my eyes focused on the eight crystal balls bubbling before me.

I kept my eyes fixed on the balls and they began to glow...bright and milky against the dark descending on the two of us until I could barely see her across the table chanting in a low murmur, clawed hands outstretched like one of the Weird Sisters.

Her chanting began to rise in a crescendo and he eyes rolled back into her head, and even then I tried not to laugh at the absurdity. Even when the table began to rumble and shake with whatever hi/lo tech theatrical animatrics she had rigged for the occasion.

But my disbelief in her powers stopped the moment his face appeared in the bubbles.

David.

Not just one...but several.

All various David's in various incarnations. In some he was thinner, more haggard, aged, fatter, more suave, more self-assured, confident, and even pathetic.

But they were all him. With beautiful brown eyes the color of burnt toast that sucked me in and caught my breath.

I could feel her studying the wonder on my face and smile as if to cackle: "Ha! I told you I could do it!"

"You know this man," she said. It wasn't a question but I nodded anyways.

"Then, he is your fate," she chortled in answer, her thin-bone shoulders shaking.

I scrunched my eyes. Yes, they were all David, yes... we were tangled together. In eight worlds at least. But...where was he...

My eyes quickly flitted back from one to the other in their various activities in each of the crystal, trying to parse out the one...

"There he is," I gasped when one of the David's turned his back toward me and flinched his back. Like a cat. Then I realized his surroundings: he was deep in the woods. And battered. And bruised.

I had found him.

My hands reached towards the crystal ball animating my David in the corner. If only I could touch the cold glass bubble of his reflection, and caress the sores to health...

I could hear the old hag cry out to forbid me...

But it was too late...

My fingertip grazed the hot surface of the glass...and then...

POOF!

David's face crumpled within itself as the glass went smokey black, and then burst into ashen crystalline shatters at my touch.

I looked at the woman in shock. What had I done!

And the gaze of her weary witchy eyes terrified me.

As they looked more in shock than even mine must have been.

As all the bubbles on the table began to burst into black ashes and glass powder.

One after.

Pop! Pop! Pop, pop, pop, pop....pop...

Smoke rose from the table from the center of each bubble.

And I stared at her my mouth wide open as she hissed...

"WHAT ARE YOU?"

And I shook my head in terror because even now, all these months later, I'm afraid to find out.

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A/N

Whut whut whut whut was that!!! ZOMG!!!

So epic.

Anyways, as the heading suggests this is a rough FIRST draft preview of PART three of All Your Fates, a sideways story to the complete novella featured on wattpad, that Tom, Jim and I will be bundling on Amazon as a total novel for purchase when all is said and done. But don't fret, we will provide you a complete story on wattpad of David's adventures in his world.

<3

Carrie

All Your Fates © 2012 Carrie Cutforth, Jim Martin and Tom Liljeholm. All Rights Reserved.

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