Ahead Cuddles stopped and brayed.

Ascanio dashed forward and whipped around. “It’s blocked!”

A massive industrial Dumpster lay on its side, blocking the path. At least eighteen feet long and filled to the brim with bricks and concrete. One of the Warren’s gangs must’ve set it here to trap passersby so it would be easier to rob them. We had to go around.

The wendigo opened its jaws and let out another scream. It was barely two hundred yards away.

I grabbed Cuddles’s reins and pulled her, trying to get her up the trash slope. Cuddles brayed and stopped dead.

Robert grabbed the reins next to me and pulled. “Come on.”

Derek slid off the saddle and screamed, “Stop, you moron!”

I whipped around.

Ascanio was running toward the wendigo, his knives out.

No, no, no, you stupid idiot!

My body had moved before my mind realized I was running after him.

The wendigo paused, scooped something from the trash, and shoveled it into its mouth. The huge teeth scissored and a piece of a wooden beam fell from its mouth, sheared clean.

Ascanio leaped and carved at the wendigo’s legs, his knives a whirlwind. The creature howled.

I sprinted so fast, I was almost flying.

Ascanio whirled around the wendigo’s legs like a dervish, slicing and cutting. Pink blood sprayed the trash piles. The wendigo’s left ankle gave out and he dropped to one knee.

Run faster, damn it, I had to run faster.

Ascanio backed up toward me to avoid being crushed. The wendigo’s hand snapped, shockingly fast, and closed about the boy. He jerked him up and smashed the bouda against the ground.

Oh no.

Robert shot past me and leaped onto the wendigo’s face, his claws slicing.

The wendigo jerked Ascanio up, oblivious to the wererat clawing its face, and smashed him against the ground again. Bone crunched. The wendigo raised its hand. It was blood-red. The claws raked Ascanio’s prone body. If I didn’t stop it now, it would kill him.

I stopped to inhale some air.

The creature bent down . . .

“Aarh!” Stop.

The power word tore from me in a rush of agony. The wendigo froze. Robert froze too, the claws of his left hand buried in the wendigo’s face, his right arm raised to claw at the creature’s human eye.

Four seconds. That was how long the spell would hold them.

A furry shape leaped from the right above me, sailing through the air, arms raised, a tomahawk in his right hand. Derek landed on the wendigo’s face and carved at its neck with his axe.

I shot forward and sliced the tendons on both hind legs.

Desandra swept Ascanio up and staggered back, stumbling.

The wendigo shook. Derek chopped into it again and again, casting off a pink mist of blood.