Nate Southard

Bad Magick Nate Southard

In 1901, famed mystic Aleister Crowley passes through a barbaric land known as El Paso, Texas. There he meets one-armed ex-confederate guerilla Joel Stuart, shepherding pilgrims toward a religious relic. Among these men is a Russian monk known as Rasputin. Together, these outcasts stand witness to the terrible things men can do in the name of civilization, things normally locked behind closed doors or hidden deep in the shadows. When a band of militant Jesuits arrives in search of Mary's prayer shawl, El Paso's own brand of barbarism eclipses the zealots religious brutality. The locals butcher and consume the local reservation's gift from the elder gods, the Great White Buffalo... unaware that the buffalo was a gift for the gods. When the Elder Gods return in the form of the fabled Anasazis out from the depths of the Earth, Crowley, Rasputin and Stuart are thrown into an orgy of bloodshed and sacrifice. Ultimately, Crowley and his new companions must band with the Jesuits for a stand between mankind and an oblivion wrought by the cannibal Elder Gods. A tale of action, horror and zeal, BAD MAGICK reaches into the depths of the soul to see how what one will do to survive. "What do you get when you mix a shot of absinthe and a shot of Tennessee whiskey? That'd be BAD MAGICK, a tag-team novel by Steven Shrewsbury and Nate Southard. These two writers shake up a couple of mythic voices and slam them down hard. Which is another way of saying that the absinthe is Aleister Crowley, and the whiskey is a one-armed Civil War vet who's also a walking arsenal, and together they make for one potent brew."- Norman Partridge, author of DARK HARVEST