Read In the Wind: Out of the Box, Book 2 for Free Online

pins, hitting one in the sensitive belly so hard he goes, “OOOOF!” Another commonality shared by all mankind. Knock the wind out of us, do we not make the same noises?
    I barely have time to punch the other in the face before he raises his gun to shoot me. Fortunately, my punches are somewhat harder than a normal human’s, and his head rockets into the cobblestone street, knocking him stupid. I fumble for his gun, figuring this might be the moment to put all that practice sis has forced me to do, to work, and I roll, coming up ready to shoot.
    But the last gunman? He’s got a damned arrow sticking out of his head.
    It looks a little like one of those comic props, where you wear it like a headband, but there’s blood dripping down on his coat, and the angle is off, like it came in above his ear and is sticking out of his lower jaw. His eyes are registering shock, but his brain hasn’t quite figured out what happened yet.
    Judging from the wound, it never will.
    There are still three guys in play by my count, and they’re wielding clubs and blunt instruments. I want to know how an arrow came to be sticking out of that guy’s head, but I want to live through the next five seconds a lot more, so I focus on the matters at hand.
    I know a thing or two about fighting. When you’ve got strength beyond that of a normal human’s, it makes a street fight kind of a trivial thing. There was a time when Sienna would have killed these clowns, probably, and without much thought. She didn’t used to be that way, but she got to a point where she realized that some people are just bad. People who want to kill others are generally not easily redeemed. Those with super powers that want to kill others are usually not easy to contain, either.
    But these are garden-variety human idiots, so I just beat the living hell out of them in three moves and leave them drooling blood on the cobblestones.
    I’m not Sienna. I still have some mercy left in me.
    I’m just about to look up to see where that arrow came from when I hear a slow, clapping sound coming from the storefront. It’s really dramatic, and I get the feeling I’m about the meet the leader of this little expedition. Why are they always dramatic? Why can’t there just be a low-key villain, for once, someone who’s clearly read the Evil Overlord List and is just going quietly about their malicious business?
    On second thought, that would probably be really bad. Scratch that.
    “Reed Treston,” the man says, and I realize he’s wearing a frigging ski mask. It’s not quite cold enough to justify this, and none of his thugs are wearing one, which gives me pause. His voice is accented, Italian, and I am suddenly sure he’s the one who shouted the warning to the men in the alley that set this whole shitstorm to flying.
    “Overly dramatic villain,” I say, acknowledging him for what he is. I catch a flicker of confusion in the eyes as he steps into the alley to face me. A hunch occurs to me. “Or should I call you … ‘Axis’?”
    I make two assumptions here that could go badly wrong—one, this guy could very well not be related to my inquiries of Giuseppe at all. Two, even if he is related to them, he might not be either one of them. Also, it’s fifty-fifty whether he’s Axis or Wrench. Though my money would be on Axis, because Wrench is a dumb nickname, bereft of drama, and this guy plainly has the drama thing in spades.
    His eyes flare, and I’m feeling pretty good about my conclusion jumping for about a second. Then he flips three throwing knives out of his pockets and they come rocketing at me in a gust of wind, and suddenly I’m not so enthused about my intelligence because I’m an idiot for provoking this guy.
    I barely throw up a wind blast of defense in time. He’s strong, plainly an Aeolus, like me, and the knives come driving at me hard enough to bury themselves in a telephone pole up to the handle. I turn sideways to shrink my profile, and one of them cuts