Ordinary Monsters (The Talents Trilogy #1)

by J.M. Miro

Justice is just a bucket with a hole in the bottom, as my father used to say.

“An abomination is what he is,” muttered the deputy. “Like one of them things in the Bible.” “What things?” said Alice. He blushed again. “Satan’s minions. Them monsters he made.” She stopped and faced him and stared up the length of him. “That’s not in the Bible,” she said. “You mean Leviathan and Behemoth?” “They’s the ones.” “Those are God’s monsters. God made them.”

All that blood’s his own, but you won’t find a mark on him. You take a club to him, he just gets back up. You take a knife to him, he just heals right in front of you. I swear, it’s almost enough to make a man believe in the devil.” “Yes it is,” muttered Alice, glaring at the deputy in the bad light.

“This isn’t America, Charles. Here, you will not be less than you are. Not in my presence, at least. Do I make myself understood?”

Scared is just your head telling your heart to be careful. It’s not a bad thing.

What is it you want, Jacob? “To know those that I love are well. To bring those I have loved back to me.” And are those that you loved not with you always? “I fear, and I do not know.”

Altogether a chilly, lonesome sort of place. Scotland, she thought grimly. You’re in fucking Scotland,

Miracles are monstrous by their very nature, they are contrary to the laws of this world.

All the long rail journey out of Scotland and south through England she’d said very little, asked nothing, just glared out the coal-smeared window at the passing world, a fierce taciturn creature in a wide-brimmed hat and long stained coat more of a piece with the American West than the civilized violence of Britain.

Oh, he wants to be good. He is good, better than all of us. He’s the one who’s stood against the drughr, longer than any other could’ve done. But even back then, he’d already forgotten what goodness meant. It was always about the end result, for him. The method never mattered.

He had been alone a long time now, had watched those he loved grow old and die, abandoning him, leaving him with nothing, no one, only an ache where his love for them had been.

If you live long enough, you cease to be human, you cease to understand anything that fills the human heart. For the heart is made of time, and consumed by time, by the knowledge of its own eventual death,

“There’s more at work here than you can imagine,” Mrs. Ficke murmured. “You think you’re hunting a lion. But it’s the jungle what’s hunting you both.”

maybe next time you could wait till after we get safe.” Alice started for the hall, checking her revolver as she went, her long coat flapping behind her. “No one’s ever safe,” she muttered, “and there’s never a next time.”

Not all change is loss.”