Accidental Wizard: Accidental Wizard, #0

By Stefan Lear

Evil is a constant, not a concept, and Evil won't stop until Paul Logan is destroyed. 

Paul Logan watched his mother die before him. When a hound of hell takes his girlfriend too, the rage flowing through his veins causes an explosion of magic.

With the help of a grizzled mentor, Paul struggles through intense training. But when the man who murdered his family returns with a vengeance, the novice wizard must become a master in a hurry.

As guns blaze and magic flares, Paul has one chance to defeat the evil in front of him before he becomes the next victim.

If you like M.D. Massey, Jim Butcher, or Shayne Silvers, then you'll love this dark urban fantasy story. Grab this introduction to The Accidental Wizard series today!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Fractured Mind Publishing
• Release date: Sep 19, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386971139

Book preview

Introduction

What you hold in your hand is Book 0 of The Accidental Wizard series. It was important to tell this part of the story so that flashbacks in the series could be kept to a minimum and not interrupt the flow. The Accidental Wizard Books 1-3 are a different sort of story all together. They are just as dark and twisted as what you hold in your hand, but cover a lot more ground than what you will find here. This is just the events that shaped our hero, Paul Logan, into the man he will become, the man you will come to know.

I’m glad you decided to jump onboard. The ride to our final destination is I hope well earned and entirely engrossing. You’ll definitely want to be here when they are released.

Chapter One

It was raining and cold on the platform. Paul checked his watch. Less than five minutes until the Max arrived. He shivered. He had already been waiting seventeen minutes, and before that he had stood at the exposed bus stop to catch a bus here. Every day he wasted three hours of his day waiting or riding on public transportation. It was a grind that got old quickly. He wished for adventure, for a break from the drudgery.

He wanted to ride aboard the Greenpeace ship and blockade whaling boats. He wanted to join Earth First and be an ecoterrorist. He daydreamed about being the Indiana Jones of the ecological crusade, the hordes of the corporations that enslaved man and destroyed the earth desperate to stop his message of redemption.

He didn’t want to just put one foot in front of the other and be a cog in the wheel that crushed the human spirit. He wanted to make a difference, to be someone that mattered to the generations that came after him. Yet here he was, sorting mail all night long, and heading home to sleep the day away. At least this was the end of his work week. Now he had three days off to live life.

The light rail came to a stop, the doors slid open, and the throngs exited the cars, most headed to their day job. After the people had exited, he walked onto the Max and found a seat facing away from where the rising sun would peek over the horizon. He was tired after a ten-hour shift, and direct sunlight made his eyes hurt. It was one of the dangers of working the night shift.

Paul pulled the hood of his rain jacket up over his head to help shield his face from the sun when it showed and settled in for the fifty minute ride downtown to the Max station nearest his apartment. He paid a lot to live downtown, but everything he needed on a daily basis was within a seven block radius. Downtown was also where the counter culture people hung out. The people that society deemed fringe or socially undesirable. Those were his people. His tribe. It was still mostly dark out and many them would be headed to the mission for breakfast.

By the time he got downtown his weekly paycheck would be in his bank account. He decided that he would splurge on breakfast at Starbucks. He could sit at the table outside and check his email.

Maybe Marie would be online. He wanted to ask her if she was going to the Roxie tonight. If she were headed there, that meant she would be at one of the bars in the area beforehand. Maybe he would luck out and run into her before she got to the Roxie. It would have to be luck. Marie wasn’t big on relationships. She didn’t believe in them. She was good with hanging out though.

He had hung out with Marie once before, and after a night of drinking, and early morning scones and coffee, she was more than willing to continue hanging out with him in his tiny little SRO.

Thoughts of another hangout session with Marie danced through his mind as the Max came to a stop across the street from Target. He left his seat and exited the light rail. A homeless guy was playing a Steve Miller Band song on the guitar and not doing too bad of a job.

Paul went into the convenience store there at the station and got a cup of coffee. He put some creamer in the coffee, put a lid on the cup, and grabbed some sugar packs. After paying for the coffee, he walked back outside, the sound of a Cat Stevens song drifting toward him. He walked over to the guitar player, set the coffee down beside the guitar case, and threw a couple of dollars inside the case.

He smiled and nodded at the street performer and walked off toward Starbucks. Just two blocks to go before he could eat an egg and muffin breakfast. With a nice blonde americano coffee. Paul could almost taste it.

As he walked past the entrance to Target, a man began walking along beside him.

Got a dollar? the man asked.

Paul was startled out of his mental dining reverie. Sorry, I only have plastic, brother. He hadn’t noticed the man before.

Are you sure you don’t have any cash, Mr. Magnus? A flicker of derangement danced in the stranger’s eyes.

Yeah, I’m sure, Paul said good-naturedly. He was a little uncomfortable, but the man was no more mad than some homeless that roamed the area.

A knowing grin broke out on the man’s face. It was somewhat creepy, and curly black hair framed his head. He reached toward Paul’s head lightning quick and snatched his hand back as Paul ducked his head to the right.

The man raised his fist to his mouth, exhaled onto it, and held it out, as if inviting examination. Paul looked at him, and then at the man’s fist. Slowly the man opened his fist. Inside, laying in the palm of his hand was a golden colored disc. It looked like some kind