Gladiator hawk, p.1
Gladiator Hawk, page 1
GLADIATOR HAWK
Copyright © 2020 by C.E. Murphy
All rights reserved.
Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any means, now known or hereafter invented, is forbidden without the written permission of the author. Any use of this work to train or develop generative artificial intelligence technologies (“AI”) is expressly prohibited. The author expressly reserves all rights to license use of this work for AI.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author's imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Cover Art: Ellen Million Graphics
For Susan
(of course)
GLADIATOR HAWK
GLADIATOR SHIFTERS
BOOK THREE
MURPHY LAWLESS
CONTENTS
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Excerpt: Gladiator Wolf
Also by Murphy Lawless
Acknowledgments
About the Author
CHAPTER 1
Susan Connolly had known about shapeshifters forever.
Practically forever, anyway. Since before her son was born, anyway. Her life was divided into two epochs: Before Jason and After Jason, so anything that came before his birth counted as 'forever' ago.
She had thought she'd left shapeshifters behind, though. She'd certainly tried. Learning her boyfriend—Jason's father, Blake Lockwood—was a shapeshifter had been enough to ghost him on, before she even knew she was pregnant. But Jason had taken after his father's side of the family, so now there were days when Susan was just grateful she hadn't given birth to an egg.
But it wasn't just Jason, and it wasn't just Blake-from-long-ago. It was the wolf shapeshifter Remus Sverre, who had cornered Susan, then tried to kill her boss, who also turned out to be a shifter.
It was Scott Asher, her most recent ex-boyfriend and—more importantly, it turned out—Remus's lackey. He wasn't a shifter himself, but he'd only been dating her to get at the Gladiator Foundation's secret database of shapeshifter families, a genealogical record that dated back thousands of years. Three months ago, he'd stolen it. She hadn't seen him since.
And if Susan ever got her hands on him again, she was going to squeeze his head so hard his eyeballs popped out.
She muttered, "Splorch," under her breath, and thought that most people would probably be satisfied with imagining their revenge.
But she'd made a career out of not being satisfied with anything but the brass ring. She'd gone to college at seventeen, graduated in three years, and had her MBA two years later. She'd worked for charitable foundations, trying to make the world a better place while she rose through the ranks. Made friends in high places, hoping they'd pay off one day.
Of course, the friendship that paid off turned out to be one from her undergrad days, just an ordinary friendship, not one she'd hoped to leverage. But then she hadn't known then that big lumbering shy Garius Beren, who was lazing his way through a degree, was related to those Berens, either. She'd only half remembered him, when he rang a few years later to ask, without preamble, if she would like to be the new head of the Gladiator Foundation, the charitable arm of the billion-dollar Gladiator Group.
Susan, age twenty-seven at the time, had said yes, of course.
A week after she started, she found out she was pregnant.
If she could manage running a global charity while being the single mother of a shapeshifting toddler, she could sure as hell find Scott Asher and pop his eyeballs out of his head.
Which was why she was now stalking a fundraiser she'd made a public statement about not being able to attend. It was hosted by the Selkie Group, the sea life preservation program that Scott Asher worked for. Susan was certain he would be a no-show if he thought she would be there, but figured she might finally get a line on him if she wasn't supposed to be in attendance. She usually worked out of the foundation's Italian headquarters, so being unavailable for a fundraiser in Cork, Ireland, wasn't entirely out of the question.
Getting an extra invitation had been easy. Convincing the doorman that she was the 5'8" brunette with blue eyes described on the guest list was harder, but a short choppy wig, some contacts, and a pair of epic platform heels did most of the work for her. A look of bored irritation at having to go through the whole plebeian process of identification did the rest, and she'd slipped inside the venue feeling like a master spy.
One thing was certain: Scott wouldn't recognize her with a passing glance. She'd gained four inches with the heels. Her real hair, worn long, was red, and her eyes were green. With makeup giving her heavier eyebrows and thinner lips, Susan honestly barely recognized herself, although she was modestly willing to concede that redhead or brunette, she was smokin' hot. From the admiring glances she got, other people agreed, although she was on a mission tonight, not looking for a hookup.
Besides, dating Scott had started out as that kind of once-off affair, and look where that had gotten her. Susan had sworn off men for all eternity, after Scott. It just seemed smarter, at this point.
Usually she would enjoy this kind of soirée. Cork was a great town, and Susan was very, very good at rubbing elbows with the rich and richer. She was even better at getting them to part ways with what amounted to minuscule percentages of their overall wealth. There were dozens of faces she knew at this party, and even more that her assistant would be able to murmur a word or two about and give Susan all the ammunition she needed to charm and delight them out of their money.
Unfortunately, Susan didn't see the one guy she hoped to. Scott Asher either wasn't there, or was so well-hidden amongst the donor class that she might never get close enough to…
…squeeze his head until his eyes popped.
It wasn't really a plan. Not a viable one. What she really wanted was to take him down. To expose him as a fraud, a thief, and a back-stabbing son of a bitch…all without betraying the shifter world that worked so hard to survive unnoticed in the modern world. She couldn't do that by popping his eyes.
It sure would be satisfying, though.
Asher had gone off the radar after stealing the database. His phone had been turned off. He'd abandoned his apartment. The Selkie Group's website said he was on sabbatical. So he might not show up at this party tonight after all…but there were shifters here. Susan knew it. And if Scott and his bosses were trying to snatch shifters, then Susan would be there to—
Well. To stop them, in theory. In practice, just tracking them would be a huge win. She wanted to know where they were hiding out. She wanted to know who his human associates were, and what they knew. She wanted to know who his shapeshifter collaborators were, too, and she wouldn't stop until she had all the damning evidence she needed to take them all down in a human court of law.
Because nothing else would keep her son safe, and Susan Connolly would take the whole world apart, if that's what it took to protect her little boy.
Finally, finally, out of the corner of her eye, she caught a glimpse of—not even a familiar face. A familiar way of moving, a jaunty step that she knew. Susan slipped through the smiling, sparkling crowd toward that familiar movement, watching it, watching him, until she was certain that after three months, she'd finally found Scott Asher.
He was chatting with people she didn't know: a tall, powerfully built blonde woman, and a more sullen-looking blond man whose tuxedo wasn't as expensive or well-cut as most of the others in the room. The man jerked his head toward an exit, and Scott went with them, glad-handing all the way. Susan followed, trying to stay close enough to not lose sight without also being noticed. Spying on people, it turned out, was harder than she thought.
She slipped out the door less than a minute after them, immediately wishing she had a coat to warm her against the early February night. But if she went back for hers, she'd lose Scott, so she walked behind them as confidently as she could. She even put a bit of extra swagger into her step so if Scott glanced back, her gait wouldn't give her away, the way his had inside the opera house.
The swagger lasted about ten steps, though, because there were sections of cobbled street that nobody in heels should be trying to navigate anyway, much less trying to swagger over. Either way, Asher didn't look back. One of his blonds—the man—peeled off at the pedestrian bridge, waving a casual good night, and Susan hurried a little more, not wanting to lose Asher and the blonde woman.
They were heading toward the university, not back toward city centre the way Susan might have expected. A pit of alarm opened in her stomach as she thought of a thousand different, terrible things shapeshifters could face in university or commercial laboratories. And Scott, with that database, could hu
No more, she promised herself. Whatever Asher was up to, she, Susan Elizabeth Connolly, Executive Director of the Gladiator Foundation, single mom, and general bad-ass, was not going to let the man who'd used her get away with hurting anybody else, ever again.
Scott and the blonde turned left, up toward the hospital. Susan, aware that her shoes clopped loudly on the pavement, wished she not only had a coat, but also just a more practical ensemble for sneaking around in. No wonder spies in movies always seemed to be wearing a second outfit under the one they partied in, or had a bag stashed just outside the door to change clothes from. She would obviously make a terrible spy.
The wind caught a handful of words, throwing them back at her: Remus—mess in Imvelo—anticipating. Her stomach clenched with nerves. Remus Sverre was supposed to be dead after a confrontation with her boss a few months earlier. She knew about the mess in Imvelo—a shapeshifting wolf pack had tried to take over a South African wildlife reserve from the cheetah shifter who ran it—but she had no idea what Scott could be anticipating. She sped up a little, rubbing her hands over her bare arms as she shivered.
If she had any damn sense, she'd be home in Italy with Jason, letting a private investigator do the legwork she was currently undertaking in Cork. But she didn't know how to find a shifter P.I., and she possibly hadn't mentioned to her boss that she was determined to undo the damage she had caused to the shifter community by letting Scott Asher into her life herself. In other words, she couldn't ask Garius for advice on how to hire an investigator who already knew about shifters, and she wasn't going to risk a human P.I. finding out about them and making everything worse.
The part of her that read romance novels and watched CW television shows knew perfectly well that keeping secrets like this investigation was a sure-fire way to bring more heartache and difficulty down upon herself than was necessary, but that would definitely not happen in this case. Parts of another sentence carried back on the wind, better than I expected—doubt that— and then the woman's voice, startlingly clear in the night as she said, "Don't get cocky."
Asher laughed, sounding plenty cocky, and Susan heard him say, "Car's up there," clearly.
Dismay smashed through her. She had rented a car, but it was back at the opera house's parking garage. She would never make it back to the garage, get the car, and be able to catch up to them. She'd come so close, and was going to lose him unless she did something drastic.
"Scott! Scott Asher, you son of a bitch!" Her voice carried, bouncing off building walls to hit Scott hard enough that he flinched before spinning to face her.
Even at the distance, she could see the total confusion on his face, and remembered she was wearing a wig that thoroughly disguised her. She pulled it off, which would have been a great dramatic revel in a movie, with her long red hair suddenly flowing free. Unfortunately, this wasn't a movie, and there was no cut in the action to let her take all the hair pins out so her hair could flow freely. It stayed where it was, pinned flat against her head, and Scott didn't look any less confused.
The woman, though, said, "Told you we were being followed," just before a huge, heavy weight slammed silently into Susan's back.
She hit the pavement hard, breath knocked out of her before she could scream. Hot breath huffed over her nape before she was swatted to the side, rolling painfully into the street. Her elbows and knees turned to bleeding scrapes, stinging as she tried to get to her feet. Something swatted her again and she flew across the street, crashing into the wall on the other side.
People in movies had that happen all the time, and they just got right up from it. Susan couldn't even open her eyes. She just lay there, stunned, trying to inhale, not even really able to wonder what had hit her. Everything hurt too much to worry about those kinds of details.
Except whatever had hit her would probably do it again. Teeth set, she forced herself to sit up, vision blurry as she panted for air.
There was a lion in the street.
She knew she was going to get hit again, but she closed her eyes anyway, then opened them again more widely, trying to verify what she'd seen.
It was definitely a lion.
The blond man. The one who'd peeled off back at the bridge. He'd shifted, and come after her, probably on the blonde woman's orders.
Susan, out loud, her voice ragged, said, "This is Ireland. The biggest predators they have are foxes. I mean, what's the police report going to say about what killed me?"
If a lion could look nonplussed, the one in front of her did. Susan pushed to her feet, admiring how literally every part of her body hurt. "Honestly," she croaked, "you're better off letting me go. A lion mauling in down town Cork is going to be international news. Nobody wants that."
The lion shifted, that weird fluid change that looked, for a moment, like two creatures were occupying the same space. Then he was the blond man, his teeth bared in the same threatening growl the lion had sported. "I'll just break your neck, then."
Susan said, "No, wait, let's talk about this like reasonable people. I could—"
A massive hawk, its vicious talons outstretched, plummeted from the sky without warning. Its entire weight smashed into the lion shifter's shoulders, dropping him. He was obviously unconscious before he hit the ground.
Susan's scream came like an afterthought. The hawk shifted, turning from a gigantic bird of prey into a tall, painfully gorgeous man with sharp features and bright eyes half-hidden by hair worn longish and loose. He wore a brown leather jacket, a white t-shirt, blue jeans, hiking boots, and had no apparent concern about having shapeshifted in front of her.
But then, he wouldn't.
He'd grown up. He'd grown up so much since she'd last seen him. He was broader now, the line of his jaw fully matured, the confidence in his stance easy and comfortable. He had always been breathtaking, but there in the soft city night light, he looked like a chiselled god, a dream of what could be.
Blake Lockwood, her ex-boyfriend, her son's father, the man she'd ghosted when she learned he was a shapeshifter, glanced down the street at where Asher and the blonde had disappeared, looked at the limp man at his feet, and finally lifted his gaze to her with the devastating smile she remembered so, so well. "Hey, Susan. Sorry about the mess."
CHAPTER 2
Susan Connolly gave Blake a scathing look up and down, threw her hands in the air, shouted, "Nope!", and turned her back on him, stomping down the street toward the River Lee as if Blake hadn't just squished a lion shifter to save her life.
Blake said, "Uh," and Susan yelled, "Nope!" again, picking up speed. He couldn't say she was running. Susan had never run from a conflict in her life. But she definitely wasn't moseying, either. He hadn't, until that moment, even known someone could stomp in platform heels. He'd always thought that was the sole provenance of flat shoes. Susan, though, made it clear that his imagination had not stretched far enough.
She always had been able to do that. Whatever dream he might have, Susan Elizabeth Connolly had a plan to make it real. Whatever plan he might have, she could refine. Whatever refinements he could suggest, she would polish, until anything and everything seemed possible.
Anything and everything except keeping her by his side once she learned his shapeshifting secrets.
Blake said, "Susan!" and finally jolted himself into action, chasing her down the street. Even with her platform shoes, he was far taller than she, and despite her proven ability to stomp in the heels, she couldn't walk as fast as he could in his sensibly flat boots. He caught up with her and had just enough sense—barely—to not catch her arm. "Susan!"
"Nope! Nope, nope, nope!" Susan made a motion like he'd grabbed her, anyway, a big throwing-off effort that made him step back even if he hadn't touched her. "Nope!"
"Are you okay?" His voice softened, but it didn't get any forgiveness from Susan, who yelled, "No!" one more time, then spun to face him. "Of course I'm not okay! Somebody just tried to kill me! No! My ex-boyfriend just tried to kill me!"
