The Tiger's Mail Order Mate (Paranormal Shifter Romance)

by Jade White

  They carefully climbed down the rickety, wooden stair case onto the cobbled basement floor. The bare, incandescent lights hung from the low wooden beams.

  Amazingly enough, there were no cobwebs in the musty basement, but boxes upon boxes of coffee beans and flavor syrups. The barista ushered them further into the basement towards an old wooden door.

  “This way please. There are tunnels all through the city. You follow this one to the very end and you’ll come up into an abandoned house. Don’t turn on any lights and stay away from the windows. You’ll be fine until we come for you for the trial.” With that, the barista went back upstairs to continue on with her work day.

  Russell opened the door and looked inside. The tunnel was dark, and had cobwebs and roots dangling from the cobble stone ceiling. There was a flashlight sitting on a small stool next to the door. He grabbed it and turned it on. The old flashlight sputtered and a thin yellow beam of light proceeded to shine from the plastic lens.

  The dim beam illuminated the old stone tunnel. Dust motes swirled in the dank, still air of the Nuremberg underground. The dull sound of traffic rumbling overhead filled the still air of the tunnels, and the musty smell of old long forgotten places filled the couple’s noses.

  They wound their way through the old tunnel until they found the end. The old wooden staircase looked rickety and unsafe, but they had no other choice but to try it.

  Russell went first, since he was the heavier of the two, and placed a cautious foot onto the rotting wood stair. As he shifted his weight onto the foot, he felt the wood give beneath him just a little, but it held fast. Okay, he sent wordlessly to her. It’s holding, we just need to get up there and stay quiet.

  Sonja nodded as she waited for Russell to push open the trap door. He braced himself as he shoved the heavy wooden door upwards with his broad shoulders. The door slowly creaked open as he managed to ease it open with minimal creaking.

  Russell supported the door so it wouldn’t crash onto the old wooden floor, announcing their arrival in the abandoned house.

  The dimly-lit stone structure had graffiti on the walls with various German sayings. Over the massive hole left in the plaster of one wall there was an obviously Neo-Nazi tag, complete with a swastika and two S.S lightning bolts. Well, we’ve come to a rather cheery place, Sonja sent to Russell.

  I know, right? I hope they don’t plan on keeping us here for very long. I don’t think we’ll be able to leave to get something to eat, he replied silently.

  Sonja looked around the destroyed room and noticed a backpack in the corner. The black canvas bag didn’t have any dust or debris on it, marking it as a recent addition to the house. Or maybe they’ve taken care of that for us, she said silently in Russell’s mind.

  She walked over to the bag, avoiding the shards of broken glass and splintered wood that littered the common room of the house. There were bricks from the destroyed fireplace strewn around the room, and the shattered windows were boarded up, letting very little sunlight to filter into the descript house. The stench of human waste and decaying rodents filled their nostrils and they tried not to retch.

  Sonja carefully picked up the bag, in case there was some kind of trap inside, and eased it towards Russell who had managed to clear a space free of debris on the floor around him. She set it on the floor and crouched down next to it. She slowly unzipped the cheap plastic zipper that had been keeping the contents inside and peered in.

  Inside were enough boxes of military ready-to-eat rations to last both of them for upwards of three days.

  Looks like we’re here for a few days at least, Sonja projected to Russell.

  Great. We’re going to stink like rotten piss and dead rats when we go to the Security Council. That will look good, he sent sarcastically.

  Yeah I know, but it can’t be helped. Maybe they’ll let us clean up before shuffling us onto the floor. They can at least do that much for us.

  Right on. I wonder how we’re going to sleep in here. I don’t feel like getting tetanus, Russell wondered.

  Well, we can clear a corner, or explore the rest of the house and see if there’s any bed left or whatever. It can’t be all like this, right?

  They climbed the stairs and took in the second story. Their hearts fell to their feet. The second floor was way worse than the first. Rats skewered on sharpened stakes made out of furniture decorated the holes that were in the flimsy plaster walls. The floors were littered with even more smashed beer bottles and glass from the pane windows and more bricks from the in room fireplaces were all over.

  Wow, Sonja thought to Russell, this place is wrecked.

  Yup. Looks like we were put in the secret hideout of the fourth Reich, or so they wish to be known as anyway. Heh. Let’s just hope they don’t show up. I doubt they’ll take too kindly to a brown guy snooping around their house.

  You have a point, Sonja replied as she spied something in one of the cleaner bedrooms. Hey, come in here.

  They walked through the busted door frame of the room that had the least amount of debris in it and saw an old, broken crib. Some of the crib rails were missing and they realized where the stakes that impaled the rats had come from. There was a broken old rocking chair in the corner of the room, and on it were two expertly packaged bed rolls.

  Awesome, they left us something to sleep in anyway. I guess we’ll have to make a decent spot to sleep. I really don’t want to wake up with a shard of glass in me, Russell said silently to Sonja.

  I agree. You clean up around here and I’ll go downstairs and grab our food. I think we should sleep up here, away from any of the main entrances that either the Neo-Nazis or the other guys that are hunting us can use.

  All right. Be quick, the less we move around the better, Russell chided as he started to kick the debris under the crib.

  Just three more days and this entire thing could be put behind them. He was chomping at the bit now. Hopefully the Dragon would pull through on his medication. His supply of adrenal suppressants was running low and he would probably need triple doses to deal with the stupid politicians that would be asking him stupid questions. He really didn’t have time for stupid questions.

  Russell shoved another pile of broken glass, brick, and wood out of the way with his booted foot as Sonja came back into the room with their rations. Oh I think the Dragon put some more medicine in here for you, she thought to him.

  Awesome. They really do think of everything don’t they?

  I think that’s their job. They are more proactive than reactive that’s for sure, Sonja replied.

  Anyway, I think we should try to bivouac down as best as we can and wait it out. We’re going to be in for a boring few days, but it’s better than taking a bullet to the head.

  That it is, she replied as she rolled out one of the sleeping bags. Let’s rest up.

  Russell grabbed the other sleeping bag and rolled it out next to Sonja’s. He caught a gleam of a bucket in the corner of the room and sighed as he motioned to it. I guess that’s where we’ll be going. Not like it matters, this whole place is a sewer.

  Sonja grunted as she crawled into the dark blue sleeping bag. Let’s just get some sleep, she said as she closed her eyes.

  CHAPTER 13

  Russell and Sonja were startled awake by a loud crash and raucous music blaring from a cheap sounding speaker downstairs. They looked at each other and sat up carefully so as not to make any extra noise that might alert the people downstairs to their presence. From the lack of light filtering from between the boards on the windows, it was night time.

  They decided to stay still and quiet in the dark while the party raged on underneath them. Russell noticed some light emanating from the heat vent next to his head and decided to peer down to observe what was going on.

  There were many bald men wearing heavy black boots tied up with either white or red laces. They had their bomber jackets thrown into a pile in the corner of the destroyed room and were drinking beer while making jokes and laughing
loudly. Russell couldn’t make out what they were saying because it was in German; he doubted he wanted to know anyway.

  Sonja looked at him as he peered into the old heating vent. What is it? she sent to him silently.

  Skinheads. They’ve come here to party, he replied.

  Oh great. I hope they don’t come up here.

  As she finished her thought, the sound of heavy boots coming up the stairs caused them to jump. There were two people talking, a man and a woman, as they moved into the room next to where Russell and Sonja were hiding.

  The sounds of drunken sex began shortly after the couple entered the next room, and they both expelled a sigh of relief. They both silently hoped that no one else would come upstairs that evening.

  The party carried on loudly throughout the night, making it almost impossible for Sonja and Russell to get any sleep. At various intervals throughout the night, various skinhead couples drunkenly stumbled up the stairs and proceeded to have sex in the next room.

  At around three in the morning, a man stumbled into the room where Sonja and Russell were hiding. The tall, bald German blinked blearily at the couple on the floor and shook his head to gather his senses. He couldn’t believe there was an Asian lying next to a beautiful, red-headed Aryan beauty, and it infuriated him.

  He stalked towards Russell, grabbed him by his full black hair, and dragged him out of his sleeping bag. Russell grabbed the man’s hand in a futile attempt to remove the hand from his hair as he was dragged across the debris-laden floor. Glass and wooden splinters cut into his dark skin as the thuggish Neo-Nazi dragged him down the stairs. The skinhead hit Russell’s head on the banister as he was dragging him down, stunning him.

  Sonja sprang to her feet and followed the angry skinhead who was shouting in German that he’d found a mud and tonight’s party had finally found its party favor.

  As Russell was unceremoniously dragged into the common room, the drunken skinhead shouted, “It’s time to play with the Paki Piñata. He was in a sleeping bag fucking some hot redhead white girl. We need to teach him not to steal our women!”

  The small crowd erupted in a raucous cheer as they slowly advanced on the bloody Russell that was lying on the floor, stunned.

  Sonja silently ran down the stairs hoping to stop the beating. Suddenly, a loud roar erupted from the center of the encroaching crowd, followed by harsh, hysterical drunken screams of terror.

  Russell reared up and wrapped the skinhead who had found him in his powerful forepaws and tackled him to the ground, ripping the man’s throat out with his long, sharp fangs. His striped orange coat was stained with his blood that seeped from around the glass and splinters embedded in his hide. He was driven mad with the pain and disorientation of his concussion and was attacking anything that moved.

  The skinheads tried in vain to escape through the boarded up front door, forgetting in their terror that they entered through the tunnels below. Russell growled and shredded them up one-by-one in a flurry of fangs and claws. Both skinhead and Chelsea alike fell beneath his razor sharp claws and raw power.

  Russell pinned one girl against the wall and raked his razor sharp claws across her soft exposed abdomen, causing her entrails to spill out before her. She went white with shock and collapsed while futilely attempting to stuff her bowels back into the open cavity.

  One man attempted to flee past him, and Russell raked his razor-sharp claws across the bald man’s groin, shredding his femoral artery. The man bled out in a matter of minutes, by then most of his fellow skinheads lay bleeding to death or eviscerated around him.

  A young girl, no older than sixteen, with her red hair shaved off in the back and her fringe long in the front stared at Russell in wide-eyed terror as he slowly advanced on her after slaughtering the rest of her friends. The stench of new death filled Sonja’s nostrils as she stood there, frozen in terror at Russell’s fury. She tried to contact him telepathically and only saw a haze of red when she made contact. She didn’t want to risk his rage being turned on her, so she just stood there and watched the carnage.

  The stench of feces and urine from the newly-dead bodies filled the air as Russell descended on the hapless teenager. Russell’s muscles bunched under his orange striped fur as he prepared to pounce on the girl.

  The girl took a deep breath and looked her death directly in his eyes. She witnessed the man’s transformation and hoped to appeal to his humanity.

  Russell’s amber, feline eyes met the ice blue eyes of the young girl and he stopped. Sonja decided to take the opportunity to reach into Russell’s head and calm him down.

  Russell, stop, she’s just a child! she barked silently.

  She’s a problem. She knows we’re here, he thought back to Sonja as he snarled at the terrified teenager.

  What if we paid her to not say anything? Sonja said thinking of a way to get around the senseless murder of a clueless teenager.

  You talk to her, Russell snarled in her mind. I’m staying like this until she either agrees or... he trailed off with a sense of finality.

  “Girl,” Sonja said in German. “What’s your name?”

  “A... Anna,” the girl stammered while staring at the large, blood-soaked tiger that stood before her.

  “Anna, you need to listen to me,” Sonja began. “If we let you go, you can’t tell anyone what you’ve seen. Do you understand?”

  Anna looked at Russell and back at Sonja, deliberately avoiding the mass carnage that was strewn about the room. “What do you mean? If I say a giant tiger ripped apart all my friends, they would think I’m insane and throw me in the hospital,” she replied with haunted eyes. “I don’t want to go back there,” she finished quietly.

  “You’ve been there before?” Sonja asked, trying to find some kind of rapport with the frightened young woman.

  “Yes. My mother didn’t believe me when I told her that her boyfriend was doing things with me. She called me crazy and sent me away to be cured. The doctors were nice, but they believed her before me for a few weeks. I started throwing up, and they made me pee in a cup. They believed me then.”

  “What happened after?” Sonja asked gently.

  Anna looked at Russell and swallowed nervously. The great cat-man relaxed his demeanor, walked over to one of the corpses, and began to gnaw away. Anna turned pale and looked as if she was going to be sick at the grizzly sight and sound of a giant animal eating one of her own kind. “Does he have to do that?” she asked.

  “Russell, have some compassion, at least wait until she’s gone,” Sonja said out loud.

  Russell gave a big sigh and flicked his tail in irritation, but stopped eating for the time being. He looked at Sonja with his amber eyes and wondered what she was getting at.

  “Anyway, Anna,” Sonja continued, “what happened after you peed in the cup?”

  “Well, the doctors said I was pregnant. I knew I was too young, so I asked what they could do. They said they could take the baby out right now and they would press charges against my mother’s boyfriend if the DNA matched, but they would have to get me taken by my parents so the state could sign the permission.” Anna felt a bit of a relief to be able to finally tell someone this story, even if it was a stranger.

  “Anna, did that happen?”

  “Yes, the state took me while I was still in the mental hospital. They took me on suspicion of sex abuse and they signed the consent for me to get the abortion. I was only eleven.” She started crying. “Some of the foster homes were nice, others not so much. There was one family who was strictly Catholic and when social services told them about my history, they took it upon themselves to beat me for my sins. I ran away after that, and never looked back.”

  “And that’s how you fell in with the Nazis?” Sonja prodded.

  “Yeah,” Anna replied. “You see, at least I had the guys to protect me. They said the reason why I was raped was because my step-dad, for lack of a better term was Paki, and yeah, he was. They said all Pakis were scumbag pedos and I bought it
hook, line, and sinker.” Anna had tears running down her face as she confessed. “Now I don’t have anyone. My gang is dead, and if I set foot out here on my own, I’ll get killed.”

  Sonja thought for a moment. “What if I can help you?”

  “How can you help me?” the girl scoffed.

  “I’ll find a way, don’t worry.” Sonja put her hand against the vibrating cell phone in her pocket. “Hold on, I need to answer this.”

  “The girl is important to us. Do not kill her. We will come and pick her up in the morning along with both of you. Clean up your mess, and wait for further instructions.” The Mouth of the Dragon’s voice said on the other end of the phone before the line cut out.

  “Well, I’ll get Russell to clean up this mess here and we can go upstairs. I have some food I can share with you. That was the people I work for, and they want to meet you because you’re a resourceful young woman.”

  “You didn’t say anything to them; you just listened so how can they know?” Anna said skeptically.

  “They have their ways. Let’s go upstairs all right? This is probably going to be the last bad thing that is going to happen to you for a very long time.”

  Anna nodded as she started up the stairs, not looking back at what remained of her gang.

  Russell, Sonja sent to him silently, This is yours to clean up. When you’re full, do something with the rest of the bodies. Drag them down into the tunnels or something. The Dragon wants this place tidied up before they get here in the morning.

  Russell yawned, exposing his long canine teeth and looked around at the ten or so corpses that littered the area. I’ll do what I can. I think there is another tunnel that branches out from here. I’ll take a look around.

  There might be a trap door in the kitchen. If not, there are closets and pantries you can stuff them in, Sonja replied.