Strange Beasts

by Susan J. Morris

You had to learn the secret language of glances and quirking lips and the whole library of gleams that could be found in a man’s eyes. You had to listen like your life depended on it, because it just might.

Her biceps were entirely theoretical, her greatest adversary the occasional paper cut.

“The thing you have to understand,” Hel said quietly, as if the shadows might overhear, “is that someone like my father doesn’t have ‘men.’ He’s a whisper of information, a nudge on someone’s baser instincts, a finger on a domino whose effects spiral out in unseen designs. He doesn’t order attacks⁠—he manipulates the circumstances so that the attacks happen without ever having to dirty his hands.”

Men like him are entirely too quick to call a woman mad or monstrous just because she can do something they can’t.

“The darkness doesn’t mean the monsters are gone⁠—it only means you can’t see them coming.”