Chapter 76

• Satake woke in a standing position. Except his feet were barely touching the floor. Head bowed forward, the muscles in his body twanged. Something was banded across his chest. A crest of some sort and it stung. His body felt numb. Especially his back region. He tried to move only to realize that his arms were wrenched above him, his wrists hemmed together. He wriggled but couldn’t move much. The air around him was musty with a lingering scent of blood.
• Flickering his eyes a hundred times to adjust to the darkness, Satake came to be fully awake. He tried to talk but he could only wince as a sharp pain shot up his body. His jaw was messed up. His foggy memories were beginning to prop up. He had remembered resisting after that damn witch had attacked him with a cursed weapon. He also vividly remembered being driven to unconsciousness by one of her vampire pals. His sight cleared slowly and in time Satake came to realize he was in someone's living room. There were rugs rolled up to a corner and he could spot a couple of chairs tossed in different corners. Not to mention the elaborate swarmed wallpaper, velvet curtains, and chiming chandeliers. Real candles were lit in the massive fixture just overhead and off to his side, casting a dull glow over his predicament.
• The floorboards were dusty and scratched, and some kind of liquid had been poured before him. That was where the blood was from.