“Ghouls however…” Clara said.

Lesser monsters were open season even if their effect was difficult to quantify. Until recently, what harm had Ghouls wrought on humans? Carrion eaters prevented the spread of diseases. For all she knew, it was hunters who brought about the Black Death by thinning out the ghoul population.

Clara dipped her fingers in the holy water and went through the motions. Upon opening her eyes, she walked past the mostly empty pews on her way to the altar. The entrance to a hunter cache is always near there.

Today, society echoed her own faith. These grand halls saw a fraction of the worshippers. Many of the faithful never stepped foot within these hallowed halls. For others, religion was like ordering à la carte at a restaurant. It’s Friday, but I’ll have the chicken, anyway. Oh! Can you swap out the fries or a salad? It’s lent you know…

The Ten Commandments, and lessons drawn from the Bible were now mild suggestions. I think I’ll ignore adultery and embrace my covetous desire for thine neighbour’s wife.

Clara’s crises of faith stemmed from what she knew, not because she drifted away from the teachings of her church. Heaven was not as advertised and the Tower had concealed the truth from hunters about old gods and ghosts. Hunters were weapons, so Clara doubted it was an attempt to keep them safe. Someone didn’t want us hunting them.

“Ghouls however…” Clara said.

In her youth, the church had been a substantial source of comfort. However, the more light that was shed on the true nature of her order, the more her faith waned. I feel as though I’ve been cast adrift on a sea of uncertainty…

“What you call faith, others would call idolatry,” someone nearby said.

Clara turned to have a better look at the speaker, but his face was concealed by the sunlight. This was the second time she encountered this man. The first of which gave her the idea of reconnecting with her past.

“Maintaining faith is a challenge when one has seen the truth,” Clara countered.

Even through the blinding light, Clara made out a smirk. She was not sure why, since nothing she said would get a laugh at a bar… no matter how drunk they were.

“Your pistols don’t benefit from faith, misplaced or otherwise. A god…” the man said.

Just like the last time, he disappeared and left her staring up at the blinding sun. At least he vanished with a few parting words of wisdom. If only she could gleam something useful from what he said.

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.