Ante Up Read online

  Table of Contents

  Blurb

  Sneak Peek

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Coming in December 2017

  Don’t Miss Dreamspun Beyond!

  Visit Dreamspinner Press

  Copyright

  Ante Up

  By Kim Fielding

  Love is a high-stakes game.

  A century and a half ago, Ante Novak died on a Croatian battlefield—and rose three days later as a vampire. Now he haunts Las Vegas, stealing blood and money from drunken gamblers and staying on the fringe of the powerful vampire organization known as the Shadows. His existence feels empty and meaningless until he meets beautiful Peter Gehrardi, who can influence others with his thoughts.

  An attraction flares instantly, bringing a semblance of life to Ante’s dead heart. But the Shadows want Peter too, and they’re willing to kill to get him. As Ante and Peter flee, they learn more about themselves and each other, and they discover that the world is a stranger place than either of them imagined. With enemies at their heels and old mistakes coming back to exact a price, how can Ante and Peter find sanctuary?

  “You bit me. You have fucking fangs and you bit me and you drank my blood!”

  “Just a bit. A few mouthfuls. Not enough to harm you.” The disclaimers sounded weak even to Ante’s ears.

  “Fangs.”

  Ante nodded, then shrugged. “Vampire.” He sighed. “I didn’t mean to bite. I’m sorry. I usually have more control than that.”

  “Vampire.”

  “Yes.”

  “For real.”

  Ante lifted his upper lip to better reveal his fangs. “Real.”

  “But that’s not—”

  Before Peter could finish his sentence, Ante tasted Peter’s blood still lingering in his mouth and remembered his own revelation. “What are you?” he demanded.

  “Wh-what do you mean? You’re the one with the fucking Dracula teeth!”

  “Boli me kurac!” Ante roared and then, acknowledging the rare lapse into his native tongue, made an effort to calm himself. “I have fed from hundreds of humans. Thousands. I know what humans taste like. They don’t taste like you.”

  Chapter One

  CONFERENCE attendee, Ante Novak decided. Midthirties, a haircut that didn’t quite disguise the receding hairline, and a moderately priced off-the-rack suit. The guy had started the night at the poker tables with a couple of buddies, but after the buddies headed up to their rooms, the man had wandered over to play blackjack. It was a small-stakes table, which was lucky for the conference-goer because he was asking for another card when he should be standing.

  Although Ante remained a good distance away, his sharp eyes saw no wedding band—and that the man was paying more attention to the cute male dealer than to the scantily clad waitresses. Good.

  One of the waitresses, a pretty girl named Ellie, approached Ante. “Want something, honey?” she asked.

  “Not tonight. Thank you.”

  She followed his gaze toward the man at the table. “Good choice. He’s got a big wad of cash in his wallet and he’s totally sloshed.”

  Ante pulled out a twenty he couldn’t really afford and handed it to her. “Thank you. Could you bring him one more, perhaps? Something strong?”

  “Sure. You want me to tell him it’s from you?”

  “Please.”

  She winked and hurried off. Ante liked her. She worked hard, gave him a helping hand now and then, and wasn’t the type to suck up to the Shadows.

  Ante ignored the casino’s blaring noises and flashing lights, keeping his attention focused on his prey. Within a few minutes, Ellie returned and handed the guy a highball glass of amber liquid. The two of them had a short conversation and she pointed at Ante, who leaned against a chair at an unoccupied table. The man’s eyebrows shot up—and then he grinned.

  Ante smiled back.

  The man quickly scooped up his chips and sauntered over, splashing a bit of booze from his glass as he walked.

  “Hey,” he said as he drew close.

  Ante cocked his hips slightly and pasted on his most smoldering look. “Hello.”

  “Thanks for the drink.”

  “It is my pleasure.”

  “Ooh! What kinda accent is that?”

  In truth, Ante had been in the United States long enough to speak standard American English if he wanted to. But that took a little more mental effort, and besides, most potential prey found themselves captivated by a hint of exoticism. “I am from a town called Krapina.”

  As Ante anticipated, the guy giggled. “Really? Is it a shitty place?”

  “It is quite beautiful,” said Ante, pretending he hadn’t heard that stupid joke a thousand times.

  The guy shrugged, which almost caused him to topple, but then he regained his balance. He tossed back the liquor in one gulp. “What country’s that in?” he asked as he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

  “Croatia.”

  Forgetting he still held the empty glass, the man tried to rub the back of his head. When he bonked himself instead, he looked at the glass in confusion. Ante gently took it away and set it on the table. “Would you like to go somewhere more private?”

  “Where’s Croashhha?” slurred the man, apparently still fixated on Ante’s origin.

  “Between Slovenia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina.”

  “Herznia?”

  “Yes. Precisely.” Ante settled his palm on the back of the man’s neck. “Somewhere more private?” he repeated.

  “Uh, yeah. Le’sh go,” he slurred.

  On the way to the elevators, after cashing out the chips, Ante established that the prey’s name was Dan, he was a pension actuary from Minneapolis, and he thought Ante’s first name was hilarious. “Like in poker!” Dan chortled as they rose to the fifteenth floor.

  “In Croatia my name is pronounced Ahn-tay. It is the equivalent of the English Anthony.” Ante was physically incapable of getting headaches, yet he imagined he could almost feel one pounding at his temples. If he hadn’t been hungry and almost broke, he would have pushed Dan out of the elevator on the fifteenth floor, ridden back down alone, and fled.

  Instead Ante followed him down the long corridor, then waited as Dan fumbled for his key card. “’S it a Herznian name?” asked Dan.

  “Yes.”

  Technically, when he’d lived there, Krapina was part of the Kingdom of Croatia-Slovenia, which in turn was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. But none of that would have meant anything to Dan even if he’d been sober. In fact, nowadays it meant nothing to anyone, aside from a few historians. Even the modern-day residents of Krapina probably gave the town’s history little thought.

  Dan finally found the card but couldn’t manage to slide it properly through the scanner. Ante took it from him to get the door open. The room was indistinguishable from the endless parade of rooms where Ante had cornered his prey. At least Dan’s was tidy, with all his personal belongings tucked away. Some people treated their rooms like a garbage dump, which always made Ante wince in sympathy for the housekeeping staff.

  “We could have s’more drinksh,” said Dan. “There’sh a bar, uh….” He spun around slowly, as if he expected to find someone serving up booze in his room. This ti
me he did lose his balance, collapsing ungracefully facedown onto one of the beds.

  Ante pounced.

  He rolled Dan onto his back—legs hanging over the side of the bed—and draped himself over him. “What about this instead?” Ante purred before licking Dan’s neck.

  Dan shuddered beneath him. “Yeah. Good. Shtay here.”

  Ante hummed with contentment and licked him again. Warm, alive. And that lovely pulse thrumming just there. He sucked on Dan’s tender neck but didn’t break the skin, and Dan shuddered again. “Good,” Dan moaned.

  “Can I suck you?” Ante whispered.

  “Yeah. God, yeah, please.”

  Flushed with alcohol, exhilaration, and desire, Dan’s skin radiated delicious heat. There was nothing like a live human body, especially here in the desert, where the sun baked everyone into a stupor. Of course Ante never stood beneath that sun; it had been well over a century since he’d felt its rays. But he could still revel in the warmth of a man’s body.

  Ante slowly slid off Dan and onto the floor and settled onto his knees between Dan’s splayed legs. Dan said something unintelligible but vaguely encouraging as Ante unfastened Dan’s belt, then his button and fly. Pulling down the trousers and briefs took a bit of effort—Dan’s attempts to cooperate notwithstanding—but soon Ante had his groin bare. Despite Dan’s eagerness, he was only half-hard, probably due to the amount of booze sloshing around inside him. No matter.

  Positioning himself carefully, Ante repeatedly licked the crease where leg met torso, then dropped his fangs and slipped them delicately into the soft flesh.

  Dan moaned, but not with pain. When Ante worked carefully, his very sharp teeth caused only a little discomfort, and Dan was currently so anesthetized he’d have barely felt a machete. He gasped once or twice, mumbled something that might have been God, yes, and then went still. Within moments, he was snoring.

  Ante licked slowly at the oozing blood.

  It wasn’t the best meal he’d had. The alcohol content was fine—Ante was used to that—but Dan had recently eaten something garlicky. Contrary to myth, garlic wouldn’t scare Ante away, but it tended to overwhelm the iron and salt flavors he craved so desperately. Even so, Ante fed. He was hungry and didn’t want to bother finding more prey tonight.

  It took very little to fill him—less than a pint, since he ate regularly. He licked at the tiny wounds until the bleeding stopped. Dan might wake up light-headed and dizzy, but that would be more from a hangover than blood loss. It was unlikely he’d notice the minuscule scabs in the crease of his leg. And if he did, he’d assume Ante had scraped him with his teeth before or after blowing him. He wouldn’t remember that he never actually got that blowjob, and he wouldn’t realize he’d provided dinner to a vampire.

  They never did.

  Moving carefully, Ante slipped the wallet out of Dan’s pants pocket. As Ellie had promised, it was stuffed with bills—over a thousand bucks. Either Dan had enjoyed a really good night at the tables before getting wasted, or he’d planned to gamble more than he’d managed to.

  Ante took six hundred dollars.

  It was a calculated decision—enough to get him through another week or two, but not enough for Dan to realize Ante had stolen from him. When Dan counted his stash, he’d assume he’d lost the six hundred while playing cards. The rest of his night would be a blur too, including the sex that never quite happened.

  Ante moved Dan’s body until it was fully on the mattress, then covered him with the duvet from the other bed. Dan was still snoring. On a whim, Ante wrote on the little pad of paper on the nightstand: Dan, get your cholesterol checked. It’s too high.—A

  Smiling and sated, he left Dan’s room.

  Chapter Two

  DURING the year that Dorothy Coughlin’s heart thumped its last, Elvis Presley and Doris Day topped the charts, Eisenhower beat Stevenson in the presidential election, and moviegoers flocked to The Ten Commandments. Ante had been in New York at the time, even though Vegas casinos were popular and members of the Shadows were already seated among the audiences at Sinatra’s and Martin’s shows, searching for prey. The Shadows hadn’t controlled much of the city back then—the Mafia had been the bigger player.

  Many things had changed since 1956, but not the way Dorothy presented herself. She still wore dresses with tight bodices, tiny waists, and sweeping skirts. Sometimes she even added a hat and gloves. Tonight, though, she sat with Ante in the Vietnamese restaurant at the Rio, bareheaded, in a sleeveless blouse and bright capris.

  “You have never been tempted to update your look?” Ante asked her.

  “No. This works for me.”

  “It does. But imagine if I were to wear my original costume.”

  She laughed. “This is Vegas, darling. People would barely notice. Besides, I bet you looked gorgeous in frock coat and top hat.”

  “I was a peasant, Dorothy. I did not own a frock coat.”

  “What did you wear, then?”

  “A long embroidered shirt,” he answered with a sigh, “and loose trousers.”

  She scrutinized him sharply. “Did your wife embroider that shirt?”

  “My mother. I had no wife.”

  “Surely you didn’t sleep with men, not then and there!”

  He shook his head and decided against lecturing her that homosexuality was not a twentieth-century invention. “You came here to discuss my ancient sex life?”

  She fished some noodles from her bowl with a plastic fork and shoveled them into her mouth. Except for blood, Ante rarely ate—he didn’t need food and didn’t like the way it sat heavily in his stomach. Ugh. But Dorothy often consumed a few bites of something during their meetings. For the novelty, perhaps.

  At the adjacent Rio Sports Book, a group of frat boys roared at something on the TV screens. Frat boys were easy marks. Even the ones who considered themselves straight became less picky about gender if it meant getting sucked off. They were frequently easy on the eyes too. But they didn’t generally carry much cash, so Ante preferred somewhat older and more pecunious prey.

  “You lost your room at Circus Circus,” said Dorothy.

  “I am bored with that place.”

  “You’re broke. Again.”

  He shrugged. “I will not be for long.”

  “You’re going to corner one of them?” She pointed her fork at the college boys.

  “I might.” Or perhaps he’d go somewhere with wealthier clients. Aria or the Wynn. Or the nearby Bellagio.

  She huffed dismissively and pushed her bowl away, keeping the fork. She hadn’t quite adjusted to smoking restrictions, so she tended to keep something between her fingers. Sometimes she forgot herself and tucked the item into her mouth. Ante had joked about it in the past, telling her she had an oral fixation. But then, didn’t all vampires?

  “Aren’t you tired of being a whore, Ante?”

  “No.” He leaned back in the chair and crossed his arms. “Are you here to give me a morality lecture?”

  “Hardly. Sleep with whoever you want. Steal from ’em too. I don’t care. My bosses don’t care either, as long as you’re low-key about it. But don’t you dream of anything better?”

  He chuckled. “I do not. I told you, I was a peasant and then a soldier. You may be driven by post–World War Two Protestant fantasies of upward mobility, but I am not. As long as I am well fed and well fucked and have a comfortable, safe place to sleep, I am content.”

  That was almost true.

  “Content!” Dorothy scoffed. “You are an apex predator, darling. Like a lion.”

  “Maybe. And what does a lion do after it has fed? It stretches out in a warm spot on the savannah and sleeps. It does not spend its spare time engaging in stupidly complex intrigues.”

  “But lions do jostle for power, right? They fight over territory? That’s what we’re doing.” This time she not only pointed with the fork but also swept it for emphasis, like a conductor with a baton.

  “This does not concern me.”
>
  “But it could. It should. Look, Edie sent me here to recruit you, okay? Again.”

  Ante set his jaw. “Edie” was Eadburg, one of the oldest vampires he’d met. She wasn’t at the very top of the Shadows’ hierarchy, but she was close to it. “Tell her no. Again.”

  At the sports book, something exciting must have happened on the TVs, because the frat boys erupted in cheers. When Ante had been their age, he’d worked from dawn to dusk every day, helping his family wrench a meager living from their little farm. He’d gone to bed exhausted and sore, and if the harvest was poor, he often went to bed hungry as well.

  Dorothy leaned over the table and tapped his arm with the fork tines. “You can choose a nice room in any of the casinos we run and never have to worry about where you’ll be when the sun rises. The pay’s good too. You can upgrade your wardrobe.” She made a face at his jeans and plain T-shirt, even though she would have agreed he looked good. “You can buy yourself a car, maybe. Live it up.”

  “I died a hundred and fifty years ago.”

  “Then wrap yourself in a cape and brood when you’re off duty. Whatever floats your boat. But you won’t have to go skulking after college boys and plumbing-supply salesmen anymore. We’ll send you all the pretty boys you want. Room service.”

  “It is all right to use whores but not be one?” he asked, brow arched.

  “We’ve got humans for that, darling. Hundreds of ’em. And you don’t even have to get ’em plastered before you take a nibble, ’cause they all know the score.” She lowered her voice as she leaned forward. “We’re vampires. We’re social beings, not lone wolves. Join us, Ante. It’s safer.”

  “Is that a threat?”

  She sighed, which was overly theatrical considering she didn’t even need to breathe. “No, it’s just reality. It’s always better to be part of a team—and to have that team at your back when you need ’em. We’re not the only creatures who go bump in the night, you know?”