Bad Magic

Magic is real. Strange forces and uncanny creatures abound. Cosmic evil is loose in the world--especially around San Diego--along with transcendent evil, primordial evil, simmering evil, objective evil, and specific evil. In sheer self-defense, most of the human race long ago taught themselves to shut their magical Third Eye, blinding themselves to this supernatural world around them. As protection goes, it's not 100% effective, but it's still pretty good: If you can't see them, they can't see you. Fortunately for the rest of us, a few people can deal with the weirdness. In San Francisco, a motley group of adventurers have banded together to fight evil. They're an uncanny mix of alchemists, thaumaturges, necromancers, and totemists, working their wildly different magics in a milieu where thaumaturgy is a laboratory science and raw pain can be kept in a flask of liquid nitrogen. They know they don't know what they're doing. And they have to save a world that doesn't know it's under attack from forces that they wish were beyond comprehension. Poised, headspinning, and richly inventive, Bad Magic shows us what people really see when their third eye opens.

Stephan Zielinski was born in Buffalo, New York and raised in California. He has attended clown school and the University of California at Berkeley, and written statistics code on both sides of the Iron Curtain. Bad Magic is his first novel.

From Bad Magic

"Creedon, we've got to get out of here!" Rider scrabbles towards the cockpit. "The keys! Where are the damn keys! Who turned off the goddamned engine?!" He dithers and waves his hands. The engine turns over. The boat blunders forward, heading west.

"Duck."

Rider is something of a chowderhead, but he and his friends have trained for many hours to acquire the "duck" conditioned reflex. A kamikaze sea urchin sails over his head, squeaking.

Thibaut takes the wheel. "Destroyer approaching, Mr. Rider." He heels the wheel hard to port.

"Wrong way, Creedon! Not sou--" A shell hits off the starboard bow. "Never mind. Just warn me next time, okay?"

"RESISTANCE IS FUTILE," booms the destroyer's P.A. system. Rider can hear the Muzak oozing from the destroyer: a gutted, bleached, and deflavored "Yellow Submarine." Tracer rounds find the yacht and pieces of superstructure are chipped into the ocean.

Rider rummages in his pack. He can't see the labels in the dark but he can feel the Braille. "Yak butter...Virgin's blood...Grandma's fruitcake..." A rocket shatters the yacht's radar boom.

"Gorgon dung...Yttrium needles...Sacramental ouzo...I have got to get a system one of these days...Mandrake..." Another shot hits the water off the port stern.

"Wicker lingam...Nixon buttons...Schrödinger's cap...Aha! Where's the damn can opener?"

Rider gashes his thumb in his haste to open a king-sized can of Chicken of the Sea. Seizes a line, takes a deep breath, and jumps overboard. Bounces off the hull a few times. Begins letting his breath go to moan certain bass notes in a language that predates mankind.

Something huge and black hits the water nearby ...