Gladiator Cheetah, page 1
part #2 of Gladiator Shifters Series
For my Patreons
who make it possible for me to do this
GLADIATOR CHEETAH
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
GLADIATOR CHEETAH
GLADIATOR SHIFTERS
BOOK TWO
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
Epilogue
Excerpt: Gladiator Hawk
Also by Murphy Lawless
Acknowledgments
About the Author
CHAPTER 1
Shannon Kavanaugh's hip hurt, and probably always would.
That's what the doctors had told her, anyway, along with the news that she'd never be able to compete at international levels again. The bone had shattered when she fell. They'd pinned it all back together, but the strain of competition, the cold setting into the pins, yadda yadda yadda. That's what Shannon had been hearing, by the end. Yadda yadda yadda.
For one thing, she didn't completely believe them. She was young—they kept mentioning that—and the young healed well. Twenty-eight didn't heal as well as fourteen, maybe, but it healed well, and biathlons—skiing and shooting—weren't in themselves high-impact events, although the training for them sure was. And it still hurt, even though most of the healing was done, so she was willing to accept she shouldn't go out in the cold and the snow and strain the bone and muscle again for a while.
Which was why she'd answered the ad a friend had forwarded to her, from an animal reserve in South Africa. They were looking for people passionate enough to help guard the animals against poachers in hundred-degree-plus weather for what amounted to the emotional satisfaction of the job, since the pay was terrible.
Shannon had actually heard herself say, "What the hell," out loud as she sent in her application. She glanced at her phone now, reading what she'd written: 28 years old. Olympic-class biathlete with a hip injury. Better with snow than heat, honestly, but hell on wheels with a gun. Happy to plant a dart in a poacher's ass. Call me! XoX
In retrospect, responding to want ads while hopped up on painkillers maybe wasn't the best choice she'd ever made.
On the other hand…they'd said yes. They'd paid for the work visa. They'd paid for a business class plane ticket from New York to Johannesburg, in consideration of her injured hip. They'd even paid for the car service that brought her from O.R. Tambo International Airport to the little, out-of-the-way airport that served smaller communities and independent pilots.
And now she was on a tiny twin-propeller airplane with a grand total of five passenger seats, if you included the co-pilot's seat. Which Shannon did, because she was sitting in it. She was pretty sure the plane was older than she was, and hoped like hell the pilot didn't have a heart attack, because while she understood flying wasn't hard, landings were supposedly pretty tricky.
But man, she couldn't fault the view.
Low, scrubby forests and veldt spread out beneath her feet, dotted by lake-sized puddles that had clearly shrunk from their winter spread. The earth had a damp look to it, and she'd read that in this part of South Africa, nearish to the eastern border, it could rain torrentially in the summer. Which it was, even though she was coming from Colorado's 15°F winter. She'd spent her whole life in the northern hemisphere, and could hardly wrap her head around the idea that January was somebody's summer, even though intellectually she'd known it since she was about six. She still kept thinking it had to be winter, which made it even more confusing that the land below her was greener than Shannon had imagined.
Not, honestly, that she'd known what to imagine. She'd spent hours on the internet, trying to set her expectations, but nothing came anywhere near close to sitting in the bubble of a prop plane, skimming above the landscape. They were so close to the ground that she could see a herd of animals she randomly decided were wildebeests, although honestly she didn't know if they even lived in South Africa. At times she felt like she could lean out and touch the tops of low scrubby trees. The airplane wasn't even pressurized, that's how low they flew.
Shannon kept wanting to ask questions, but the engine and propellers were so loud that she would have to shout to be heard, so she ended up giving the pilot a lot of wild grins that he answered in kind. He finally shouted, "Just another minute now!" and banked sharply enough that she swallowed a shriek and felt the weight of the turn in her left hip.
What could be called an airport runway, if she was generous with the definition, opened up in front of them. It was different from a road in the sense that it was wider and a single lane through the low scrub, although an awful lot of the roads looked like that, too. Most of them, though, only had two wheel ruts, and this one had three. The little airplane zipped down into them like it had dug them itself, which, Shannon supposed, it probably had.
An open-topped Jeep came rushing toward them in a cloud of dust. Plane and vehicle—not that a plane wasn't a vehicle—stopped almost nose to nose, and a lanky man in a broad-brimmed hat swung out of the Jeep, shouting in a language Shannon didn't understand. She put 'learn the local language' high on her list of things to do while working for the reserve, and figured out how to open the door next to her so she could step out of the plane.
The man in the hat banged the nose of the plane a couple of times as he approached on the pilot's side. Shannon swore she wouldn't have been surprised if the pilot had rolled the window down, but he opened his door the same way Shannon had opened hers, and had a rapid-fire discussion with the man in the hat while Shannon dragged her duffel bag from behind her seat.
The movement caught the hat-man's attention and he looked straight at her, giving her a clear view of his face for the first time. A rush of relief sang through her. "Aeolis Savio?"
"Shannon Kavanaugh," he said with a smile. He'd been handsome in his photograph, but in real life his smile was devastating, and freckles that hadn't been visible in the photo stood out on his brown cheeks. His eyes were such a light brown they looked gold, even in the shadow of his hat, and he was taller than she'd imagined, with a runner's build that looked like it could go for miles. In any situation.
Shannon decided she would blame the sudden flush of heat that ran through her on the broiling afternoon sun. Aeolis wore his shirt open a couple of buttons, and rolled-up sleeves showed off strong forearms as he ducked under the airplane's nose to offer her his hand. "Good to meet you." His voice was wonderful, accented with notes she wasn't familiar with, and his grip was warm, strong, and confident. Shannon had a sharp, unreasonable wish that he'd been there to catch her when she fell. She felt like she wouldn't have fallen, if he'd been there to catch her. Which was ridiculous.
The feeling that she was absolutely safe with him still overwhelmed her, and she totally failed to hear him ask something as he looked at her duffel bag, then deeper into the plane. His accent was beautiful, though, at least to her American ears, and she wondered what language he'd spoken with the pilot. "I'm sorry, what?"
"Is that everything? I was just asking Melokuhle if he'd bring your stuff up to the site, but if that's all you've got, we can throw it into the back of the Jeep. I'm sorry. There's an emergency a few miles out." His accent was light, different from British English in subtle ways that she supposed must mark him as South African, to people who knew more about accents than she did.
Except since she was in South Africa, that meant she was the one with the accent. She would have to get used to that. "Oh. Oh! Oh no. I mean, yes, this is everything." Shannon strengthened her grip on the duffel as Aeolis made to take it from her. "No, I've got it, let's go, I don't want to slow you down."
His smile shone again. "Great. Thanks, Melokuhle. Will we see you at camp or are you heading out again?"
"No rest for the wicked," the pilot said, and waved them off.
Aeolis ducked back under the plane's nose, heading for the Jeep's driver's seat, and Shannon, heading for an American-side passenger seat, followed. His shirt was untucked and the tail fell past his hips, but not so far that she couldn't appreciate the way his light-colored woven trousers fit. "That," she said under her breath, "is South Africa's ass."
He glanced over his shoulder at her so sharply she was su
Never. Ever. Ever. In her whole life. Had she ever gone straight from hello to carnal lust. Not like this, certainly, and definitely not since she'd broken her hip. She'd had a few high-octane affairs during college and training, but they'd come out of friendships, not out of the clear blue sky, and they'd been short-lived, because she was, in the end, more interested in her goals than in finding love.
"Here," Aeolis said easily. "You're going to need this, and enough sun screen to drown in." He offered her a hat like his own. She jammed it on her head as he started the Jeep, and twisted in her seat to dig her UV50 sunblock from the top of her duffel bag. Aeolis's light gaze followed her in the mirror and he smiled. "Had it handy, that's good."
"I probably should have had it on. I didn't know the plane would be so…window-y. And I have the rare skill of being able to sunburn through windows." This, to Shannon's dismay, was completely true. "I do tan, if you compare, like, my arms, after I've spent a summer outside, to some part of me that's been covered up. They're definitely a slightly different color. Reddish-brown. Or brownish-red, maybe. Mostly red, anyway, but different from fish-belly-white, which is what I usually am. I'll show you sometime." Her eyes bulged and she set about applying sunblock with more vigor than necessary, as she wasn't really in the habit of offering to display body parts that didn't see the sun often to strangers.
Aeolis Savio's grin, which was wonderful and wide to begin with, got bigger and broader. "Thank you for the offer, but I think maybe I should chalk it up to jet lag."
Shannon squeaked, "That would be very thoughtful of you. Maybe we can revisit it later." She had no idea why she'd said that. Jet lag, probably. Maybe.
Either way, Aeolis laughed. "So you weren't kidding about being better with snow than heat."
"And you hired me anyway," she said, relieved for anything vaguely resembling a change in topic.
"With your resume? I'd have hired an ice cream truck to drive you around in if necessary."
"Can we do that?" Shannon's voice rose hopefully, but before he could answer, a herd of elephants walked out onto the road, stopped, and stared curiously at their Jeep. Shannon's jaw dropped and she made a breathless sound of amazement, the sunscreen forgotten in her hands.
"Ah no no no no no no no!" Aeolis thumped the steering wheel—not, Shannon noticed, the horn, just the steering wheel—and stood in his seat to stick his head out the top of the Jeep. "Go on! Come on, I've got to—please! I need to get past!"
"Elephants." Shannon squeaked again. "That's a…herd of elephants." She'd seen them in zoos and even ridden one in a circus, back when she'd been very small and that was still a thing. But that was nothing like just driving up to a herd of them out wandering around like it was their territory. Which, of course, it was. But it wasn't the same at all, and they were far, far bigger than Shannon remembered them.
All except three who weren't even as big as the Jeep, and who were peering with interest toward them. One hid between its mother's legs, and another, braver, came several steps toward them. Shannon fumbled for her phone so she could take pictures, and got sun screen all over it as she got it out. Definitely worth it.
"Yes," Aeolis said in frustration. "And they're very nice, and they're not usually bothered by humans, but the babies want to look, so the whole herd will wait, and…I need to get past!" he called again, as if he genuinely expected the elephants to listen.
One of them sat down. Aeolis groaned. Shannon stood up, holding her hat in place as wind gusted past them, and took a picture. Two pictures. First one of the elephants, and then, like a proper tourist, turned, put the phone on selfie mode, and got a picture of herself in front of the curious herd.
Aeolis gave her a brief, rueful smile. "Sometimes I can forget how wonderful it is. I'm glad you're here to remind me." His smile faded, though. "I really do need to get past them, and they could stay all day."
"What's the emergency?"
"There's a mother cheetah about a mile farther out who's about to give birth. She'll be fine, but a pack of hyenas has been lurking around and I want to scare them off so they don't have a chance at the cubs."
"Oh." Shannon caught her breath. "Oh, okay. Okay, how do we deal with this?"
"Can you drive a stick?"
An absolutely, positively crude response sprang to Shannon's lips and she coughed it down with another blush. The question had been on the application form, so technically she imagined he knew the answer, but she responded with, "I haven't since I broke my hip, but as long as the clutch isn't too stiff, I should be fine," anyway.
"Okay. All right. And, ah, how are you at accepting the impossible and getting on with things?"
"Um." Shannon blinked at the earnest frown on Aeolis's face. "I don't know? I guess if it'll help save some cheetah cubs, I'm pretty good at it?"
"Okay. Good, because I'm going to need you to be. As soon as the herd clears, I'll need you to follow my tracks. I have to go ahead, or I'm not going to get there in time to protect the cubs."
"Right. Okay. I can do that." Shannon smiled hopefully, and Aeolis Savio climbed out of the Jeep, turned into a cheetah, and bolted away across the veldt.
CHAPTER 2
This, Aeolis said to his cheetah, has got to be the worst idea ever.
He hadn't even taken time to look at Shannon Kavanaugh's expression after he'd shapeshifted. He'd just bolted, hoping desperately that the cheetah within him had been right about its casual, confident belief that she wasn't going to run screaming into the brush.
And to be fair to his cheetah, she hadn't even screamed, much less jumped out of the Jeep and gone tearing off into the wilderness.
To be less fair to his cheetah, though, there was also an entire herd of elephants only a few dozen meters from the vehicle. No one in their right mind would get out of the car under those circumstances, even if someone had just done something exceptionally impossible. Like shapeshift into a big cat, for example.
It didn't matter. He'd taken the cheetah's advice, shifted, and made a break for it, leaving a total stranger to Africa alone in a vehicle with a herd of elephants.
If everybody survived the next couple of hours, he fully expected to be buying Shannon Kavanaugh a return ticket to the States for tomorrow morning. This was not a good way to start a professional relationship.
Or any sort of relationship at all, for that matter.
Aeolis tried very hard to put that thought out of his mind. He had only laid eyes on Ms. Kavanaugh for the first time ten minutes ago, and the fact that her clear green gaze and slim, lithe body had shaken him to the very bottom of his soul was not a useful topic to dwell on when he had cubs to protect.
Not his cubs, obviously. The queen out there was a true cheetah, not a shifter. But there were few enough cheetahs in the world that Aeolis regarded all of them as his. Or at least all of them on the seventy-square-mile reserve, which still made for more infant-shaped responsibilities than the average parent had.
He had left the elephants behind, aware that they'd watched him shift and race away from the Jeep with their generally unflappable attitude. Cheetahs were not, as a rule, dangerous to elephants. Even elephant babies were too big for a cheetah to successfully hunt, and elephant babies tended to have elephant mothers nearby. Cheetahs weren't that dumb. Not even lions, who could haul a lot more weight around than a cheetah could, were that dumb. So if Aeolis really wanted to, he could probably go safely winding through the herd's legs without threatening or being threatened by them.
Today, however, was not the day to try it. He cut across the brush, loping rather than racing. A human mind behind a cheetah's speed could keep up the animal's notoriously fast pace longer than a true cheetah could, but when a cheetah was done running, it was done. Aeolis needed to get to the queen, not exhaust himself and lie around panting in the sunshine.
He heard the hyenas before he smelled the queen, and put on a little burst of speed that threw him into the middle of the gathering pack. A combination of his snarls and their surprise sent them scattering, but it would only be a minute or two before they realized he was alone, and regained their confidence. A deep sniff of the air told him there wasn't anyone around who could help, either, so he picked up the pace again until he found the queen nestled in a deep shelter of thick, thorny brush. She hissed and he backed away, circling her den to judge it for weaknesses.
