Debrah Morris - When Lightning Strikes Twice

“Spirits live forever. Mortal coils decline and die. Maybe you weren’t listening the first ten thousand times I explained the transmutation process.” Celestian concealed his irritation. The Boss frowned on displays of human emotions. Conversations between routing reps and detainees were often recorded and assessed for quality assurance.

Backsliding was duly noted during evolvement reviews. Since being demoted to time-out monitor, Celestian had been cited more than once for acting too human. It wasn’t his fault. Pendleton could provoke a senior-level saint.

The situation had begun innocently enough. Less than a day after Celestian began working in the Department of Natural Forces, Pendleton had alighted in Reception yelling about how he’d been hot on the earthbound trail of a cold-blooded killer. Just when he had the miscreant in his sights, a lightning bolt had arrowed out of a cloudless sky and ended his life.

That assessment was a bit off. It was actually the desperado who had gotten the drop on the lawman. An Emergency Order to Intercede had been fired down to the department, and Celestian had dispatched a spear of lightning on the Ranger’s behalf. New to the job, he’d miscalculated both the trajectory and heaven to earth time differential.

Misfiring lightning bolts was bad enough, but Celestian’s real mistake had been admitting his error. News that the shocking end had been intended for the bad man only fired Pendleton’s anger. Seems he’d been snatched from the arms of his true love three days before their wedding.

In the end, failure to accept his unscheduled death had earned him a U.F.R. designation and a trip to the cooler. Bungling his very first assignment had earned Celestian a demotion.

“I want to go back.” Pendleton paced like a caged beast. “There must be a way for me and Molly to be together.” He slammed his fist into his palm, and the silence only increased his frustration. “Didn’t you mention once that there’s an alternate way to return?”

“If the opportunity arose, I suppose you could go back as a walk-in.” Celestian heaved a sigh he hoped wasn’t too human. “But transmutation is beyond my abilities. I’m not certified in the latest technology.”

The Ranger wheeled around. “A walk-in? What’s that?”

“Sometimes when a mortal coil expires, and the resident spirit alights, another can assume the body and live out its natural life. If the M.C. is revived in time. It’s a simple transference procedure but only used in emergencies.”

“I want to do it. Send me back. Now!”

Celestian scoffed. “It’s not that simple. First, we need an appropriate M.C. You don’t want to return to your beloved as a cockroach do you?”

“No. But there is a way we can be together? So we can live as we were meant to do before you made a hash of everything?”

He sounded so sad, so hopeful that Celestian couldn’t tell him the odds against such a transfer. Pendleton’s soul mate was currently living her last earthly life during which she would fulfill her destiny. At demise, her spirit would retire. She and the Ranger, lovers in many lifetimes, would spend eternity apart. An injustice that might have broken Celestian’s heart, if he still had one to break.

“There may be a way. But it’s a long shot. Transference only works if an appropriate coil becomes available at the right moment in the precise geographical location. The resident spirit must alight before the coil is revived. The chances of that happening are—”

“What? A million to one?” There he went again, being hopeful.

“At least. The paperwork’s a killer. It has to be completed in triplicate and approved—”

“I’m willing to do anything, be anybody, for the chance to go back.”

Celestian reluctantly keyed in the routing request. Fat chance, but miracles had been known to happen. A miracle was exactly what the lovesick Ranger needed.

No point telling him the real odds. That he had about as much chance of returning to his true love in her lifetime as he had of being struck by lightning.

Again.

A whopper of a west Texas thunderstorm was headed her way.

The hair on the back of Dr. Mallory Peterson’s neck prickled the instant she stepped out the back door of the Western Plains Medical Clinic. The severe weather front, predicted to move in at midnight, had arrived ahead of schedule. Heavy black clouds boiled across the sky, and the sharp scent of rain tingled in her nostrils. She squinted in the unnatural gloom of an unseasonably hot and humid early May evening. No doubt about it. Trouble was brewing.

A stiff wind yanked the heavy door from her hands and slammed it shut with a bang. Blue-white lightning flickered on the horizon, followed by the rumble of distant thunder. She shivered, unsure whether the chill was due to dropping temperatures or a premonition of disaster.

After ten on-her-feet hours caring for a steady stream of patients, she was ready for a quiet Friday night alone with a good book and a bag of microwave popcorn. A big bag. With extra butter. She’d earned a treat. Not just for today, but also for every grueling shift she’d worked since accepting the position last autumn.

Clutching her medical bag, Mallory locked the deadbolt. If she got a move on, she could make it up the hill before the rain hit. Free living quarters close to the clinic was one of the perks of being the only physician in Slapdown. A native Texan who’d cut her teeth on cyclones, she had no qualms about riding out a little bad weather in a double-wide.

Yet, she couldn’t shake the feeling that all hell was about to break loose.

She glanced over the fence dividing the parking lot from the property next door. She’d slaved all spring to keep her lawn and flower beds alive in the unseasonable heat. By what freak of horticultural nature did her neighbor’s straggling patch of monster grass and gargantuan weeds grow so abundantly?

Neighbor? Squatter was more like it. The insolent, ill-mannered oaf did not pay his too-kind landlord a dollar’s worth of rent. How many times had she told Brindon Tucker that helping a lazy down-and-out bum like Joe Mitchum exceeded the limits of human generosity? Unfortunately, her longtime friend was a big-hearted guy who looked for the best in people.

What he saw in Mitchum was beyond her. Texas was filled with good ole boys, but Joe wasn’t one of them. After being thrown out of his manufactured home by a woman smart enough to finally divorce him, the shiftless ne’er-do-well had moved into a ratty, forty-year-old travel trailer he’d rescued from the salvage yard. Mere moments before it was scheduled to be flattened into a cube the size of a 29-inch television from the looks of it.

Aside from a few female tavern dwellers whose judgment was obviously impaired by frequent applications of hair bleach, his only regular companions were a pack of mangy dogs. None of which had ever had a bath, received a rabies vaccination or seen the inside of a vet’s office.

Which only proved the adage, “No man ever sinks so low that a dog or a woman won’t take up with him.”

Pumped up by righteous indignation, Mallory ignored the approaching storm and her unsettling undercurrent of misgiving. She glared at the rusting car bodies and heaps of scrap metal. How had Mitchum managed to accumulate such an impressive collection of junk in the few short months he’d lived there? The place was a scandal and a danger to community health. It was a veritable wonderland of tetanus just waiting for an unsuspecting victim to stumble and puncture something. She shuddered at the thought of the chiggers, toxic ticks and poisonous snakes lurking in the overgrown brush.

She’d lodged numerous official complaints about the eyesore on the clinic’s behalf. The citizens of Slapdown subscribed to a “live and let live” policy, but that hadn’t stopped her from trying to convince the town council to issue a citation. Warnings hadn’t worked. Maybe if they made it official and ordered Mitchum to clean up the place, haul off his junk and mow the offending vegetation, things would change.