Eclipse of the Blood Moon
But a cornered snake is at its most venomous.
From the shadows of a collapsed stone archway near the northern treeline, Madox dragged his broken, bleeding frame to his knees. His eyes burned with a mad, self-righteous light. With a final, trembling effort of his remaining strength, he lifted a heavy, mechanical hand-crossbow that had been dropped in the dirt. It was loaded with a specialized, dark-veined projectile—a Black-Silver Arrow, heavily saturated with an ancient, concentrated necrotic poison designed to rot a pureblood vampire's frozen core from the inside out. He didn't aim at Astrid. He aimed directly at the exposed back of Carmilla Dracul.