Prologue

John Holliday felt the impact of the bullet as acutely as if he'd been chased down for a kiss by a speeding locomotive. The face of Ike Clanton, over the smoking gun that had just ripped a wound through his upper left chest, and the face of Wyatt Earp, stretched in a barbaric grin as he burned off ammunition, blurred and wavered like John had fallen underwater. "Well," he said vaguely, feeling much as though he had, even with the street outside the OK Corral drier than cattle bones, "You're a daisy, Ike."

The world exploded into green and purple stars, centered around the searing pain just below his collarbone and the beginnings of a rattle in his lungs. Not now, he thought. I'm shot and bleeding and I surely do not need to cough any blood. Holliday staggered away from the gunshots, the smoke and yelling and chaos. "Peculiar," he muttered. The buildings of Tombstone seemed for a moment to be taller, broader... shiny.

Now very confused and feeling as though a badger was making a nest of his chest, Holliday fainted.