Free Invincible (The Aerling Series Book 3) by DelSheree Gladden Page A

humans can kill them. Caretaker
Officers don’t manage to take down one of their twisted counterparts very
often, but Robin’s parents confirmed it was possible. I can only guess it’s Tū’s
intimate knowledge of Aerling power that allowed him to create a being
impervious to everything we can do but the weird dagger Olivia said I created
to kill Alex, the Sentinel who attacked us at the house.
    I still can’t remember what I did that
night, or what I did the night I gave the scarred Sentinel the mark he’s so
easily identified by now. Tāwhiri brought back some of my early memories.
It was just a few, the day I was born, the day he named me and claimed me as
his heir. What he did is a mystery to me, but it was his power that repaired
that broken part of my mind. I hold part of his power now, and as we haul
Hayden into the elevator, I wonder if that means I can do what he did.
    “How do we know there won’t be Sentinels
waiting for us as soon as the doors open?” Sloane asks worriedly.
    “We don’t,” I say, “but we’ll be
prepared.”
    Sloane positions Hayden behind her and to
the side of the door. I feel it immediately when she calls her power. For a
moment, I’m surprised by the feel of it. Molly’s power feels like a buzzing
bumblebee, which suits her perfectly. I’m still trying to get a handle on Sloane,
but the soothing hum of her power is tough to reconcile with what I know of her
so far.
    Before I have a chance to think on it any
longer, the elevator chimes and the doors begin to slide open. Sloane’s gasp is
the first alert. Hammers clicking back as the Sentinels begin to fire is the
second. I don’t waste a second blasting my power out and away from my body.
Bullets ping off metal and dig into drywall in a furious cacophony of sound.
Anger fuels my next attack, lightning zapping out at every Sentinel within
range. My shield zips back into place as another round of bullets fly.
    I feel strangely calm as I send another
devastating blast of air out to one side to clear a path for Sloane. “Get
Hayden out of here,” I command. She’s on her way before I finish my sentence. A
couple of Sentinels try to break off after her, but she dispatches them with
baseball-sized pieces of hail pulled together from the ambient moisture so
quickly even I am impressed. The Sentinels don’t have time to be impressed,
thanks to the hail crashing into their skulls.
    Feeling confident in Sloane’s ability to
get Hayden back to Olivia, I turn my full attention back to the rest of my enemies.
For a second, I can’t figure out why they aren’t attacking me. It’s not until I
recognize the familiar feeling of ants crawling under my skin that I spot him
approaching from the back of the group. His scarred face is twisted in a smirk
as he stops at the front of the pack and crosses his arms over his chest.
    “Like a fly to honey,” he says.
    It was always a possibility that Hayden’s
being captured was a lure to get us onto their turf, but I don’t fully
understand. “How did you know we’d come back to Earth?” I ask from behind my
shield.
    “How could you not?” The smugness in his
voice is infuriating, but I keep a careful hold on my emotions.
    “You knew,” I say as realization dawns.
    The scarred Sentinel laughs at me. “I
knew? Of course I knew, little Aerling, little pathetic Aerling. It was my
plan, and it worked perfectly. Robin got dragged along, right through the
Aerling barrier, breaking it with no chance of repair except the Mother.”
    It takes all my effort not to show my fear
in that moment. He knows why we’re here. He expected it from the beginning,
planned for it even. “You won’t stop us,” I say.
    He laughs again, this time with a heavy
layer of bitterness. “Who says I’ll need to stop you? Finding the Mother, it
won’t be easy. Learning enough to find wherever that backstabbing woman is
hiding will require finding the truth. When you do that, I won’t need to stop
you from