Clara leaned against the statue of the country’s first home grown Cardinal, whose hollow eyes were fixed at an imposing cathedral. At night the facade was illuminated, the lights directed towards the intricate stained glass window. As her plain Jane self, no one paid her any notice, but the buskers in the square also helped. I can put up with the sisters long enough to avoid suspicion.

“Awww. She’s beginning to like us,” Sparky teased.

“Yeah… no.” Clara replied.

Last night someone had been in control of the narrative. With any luck, the Valkyrie would appear to be in two places at once.

“Unless they try to bury this story…” Clara said grimly.

Clara was not thrilled about setting off a blast in broad daylight, but she needed witnesses. At night, the authorities could have claimed the blast had been caused by a natural gas leak. As executed, they would need to spin away the counter-narratives brought forward by witnesses. You’d think it’d be a challenge to discredit dozens of eyewitnesses…

Once safely nestled away in the adjacent woods, she synchronised with time. Clara triggered the detonator.  It was easy, all she had to do was press and hold ‘1‘ on the burner phone she purchased along with the rest of the supplies.  She caught the familiar tones of the phone ringing, once, twice, and…

A fireball appeared over the wall followed shortly thereafter by the sound. The powerful blast sent the hearse’s front-end into the air, before gravity slammed it back to the ground hard.

The blast had no immediate effect on the crowd. Most were oblivious, like a gaggle of lollygagging  geese, until debris rained down on them. That’s when it turned real for them, with several attempting to back their cars out of the chaos, but succeeded only in ramming into the cars behind them.

Very little phased Clara normally, beheading her childhood crush and working as a nurse during the Great War did much to blunt the emotions she had. It worked for a hunter, but she could not help but wonder if her true self was locked away in a box before tossing the key into the deepest ocean. Even this shook me to the core…

Things that went bump in the night once played by certain rules. That guidebook had clearly been set aflame, and that made her blood boil. Fortunately, she had a way of channelling all her pent-up anger.

She tossed the ghouls into a pile and hacked off the inhuman elements. The constabulary could not suspect that these crimes were committed by something other than humans. As a precaution, she tossed all of that gore into a bag, which she planned to dispose of a long way off from here.

Alas, they recovered and charged as a pair. Neither were inclined to let fresh meat walk out of here… not after decimating their numbers.

“ENOUGH!” Clara’s voice boomed, which caused loose dirt and rock to break free from the walls.

When that did nothing to deter them, she pointed a finger at the nearest one and unleashed the bolt of fury. The beam cut through the first and struck the other in the chest. As the smell of ozone permeated the air, both writhed until the beam cut out. Only then did they fall, leaving behind smouldering heaps of darkened flesh and ash.

“Time for answers,” Clara said.

“Wait, a minute—” Clara chirped.

From the corner of her eyes there came an orange glow. The ghouls must have leveraged the network of tunnels to their advantage and had her surrounded. She turned towards the target with glowing eyes and squeezed the trigger.

The hammer moved forward in slow motion, first air escaped from the barrel, followed by the bullet. A moment later the oxygen rich atmosphere ignited the unspent propellant, creating the distinctive flash of gunfire. While the effect was something to behold, she wished it had been faster.

Clara bit the inside of her cheek to maintain focus, and fired another round from her other pistol. Within a fraction of a second, two bullets were travelling towards her first target.

Clara had a rather long and grim history with Homo Stringa, colloquially known as ghouls. It was a ghoul who interfered with her parents’ remains.

It was ghouls who captured Edith, Clara’s former hunting partner, and left her to die slowly from an infection. Most recently, she had been taken captive by government agents and those soulless bastards used a ghoul to interrogate her.

Ghouls were carrion eaters, and not known for their intellect, creativity, or aggressiveness. While they could emulate human behaviour and speech, most who encountered a ghoul knew that something was off.

It did not help that ghouls were unusually gangly. People choose to ignore the unexplainable, because they have no interest in knowing the dangers that surround them.

She dropped into the crypt. While the crossbar was makeshift, it was sturdy enough to deter an attempted break and enter. On the nearest coffin, she found a key that she was sure would fit the locks on the doors. 

“A secure way in and out,” Clara mused.

She searched the crypt to find a gaping hole in the flooring where the dip ended. This was not unexpected, but she would have preferred to find nothing at all.

“Sometimes I hate being right,” Clara said before evacuating all the air from her lungs.

The first clue was the void of light between the doors. That meant someone had barred the door from the other side. Given there was a support column between these doors, she guessed that forcing these open would draw unnecessary attention.

The last clue was the source itself. Given the intensity, she doubted it was electric, and confirming her hunch would be relatively easy. Alas, there was no obvious way to get onto the roof. 

“Time to fly,” Clara said.

Clara confirmed she was alone and shed away her plain Jane persona. Within a minute, she took to the air, but maintained a minimalistic flight path to avoid being spotted.

“Well, that’s interesting,” Clara said.

From up here she confirmed the door was in fact barred from the inside. Since the dead were not known for locking up after themselves, Clara concluded that someone or something had done it. 

“Curiouser, and curiouser,” Clara said.

At first light, Clara was back at the cemetery. Before leaving the hotel, the bulk of her things had been picked up by a courier. That left her with little more than a light pack filled with the basics: pistols, ammunition, basic first-aid kit, a knife, lock picking tools and some rope. A gal has to accessorize.

Outwardly there was nothing peculiar about the cemetery. However, she noticed something peculiar to her last visit. It was a minor detail, even for a hunter, but one that pointed to a potential infestation.

She was back to the spot where she almost tripped. Her eyes followed the straight line until met a crypt. The depression was too long to be a grave, and given how old this cemetery was, she doubted this was a buried utility line.

In fact, the gravestones in this area were old enough that the carved lettering had faded. Years of rain, snow, and wind had smoothed out their surfaces rendering several ineligible. I’d imagine there’d be a public uproar, if a utility company tried to cut through a cemetery.