Four minutes later, Lisa arrived at the gates leading to Napoleon’s estate. A few seconds after that, the other four women arrived, and once Bennett gave Lisa a dirty look to end all dirty looks, she instructed her on how to scale the eight-foot-high barred entrance. Lisa watched in amazement as the others were up and over in a matter of seconds, each landing silently in the snow on the other side. Delighted to discover she could now leap like an impala, Lisa took flight, and it was an epic fail. She’d forgotten to angle her jump, so Lisa went up, and Lisa came down…on the same side of the fence. She didn’t need keen auditory faculties to hear the muted cackling coming from the others, and fisting her hands, Lisa made it on her second attempt. She righted herself, smiling as the others smiled back at her, and then side-by-side, they proceeded up the driveway.

The snow muted their footsteps as they approached the house, and when the structure came into view, they stopped as one. In front of them were over fifty of Napoleon’s zombie vampires, appearing like the Terracotta Army as they stood motionless on the front lawn. From their collars, beacons of red cut through the night, and the only sign of life was their breath as it frosted in the air.

“Remember what I said,” Bennett said, pulling the katanas from her back scabbard. “Incapacitate them and move on to the next. Napoleon’s coven is no doubt lying in wait, and we can’t afford to expend all our energy on this lot.”

No sooner had Bennett finished speaking when the mass of red lights turned to green, and a heartbeat later, the pack of starving vampires was charging the five women.

For all but one, decades if not centuries of instinct are not easily forgotten. The first swings of their blades took off heads, as did the swings after that, and Polly, Angelique, Ruby, and Bennett fell into what appeared to be batting practice. Lopping off legs and arms, they sliced their way through the throng, getting sprayed with blood and tissue as it flew through the air.

Behind Lisa’s spunk and defiance lurked a modicum of doubt, a sliver of concern whether she could indeed take another life. And if the vampires had looked human, if their faces weren’t drooping like melted wax or their stench not that of the sewer, perhaps Lisa would have thought twice, but she didn’t.

They say the first time is the hardest, and it was. The slice of Lisa’s blade barely cut into the monster’s arm, but that was the first time, and last time Lisa tempered her strength. The next swing of her sword took the man’s arm off just above his elbow, and his other arm quickly followed, and her aim remained true as she slowly made her way through the beasts.