I was too shocked to react. My mouth fell open and I stared back at him.

“Andi!” Vik’s voice called, closer now. I heard splashing.

Riley’s eyes flashed and he pulled away from me with a noise under his breath that sounded almost like a growl. I must have still been pretty disoriented because he was suddenly several feet away from the edge of the pool faster than I thought anyone could possibly move.

I heard more splashing and angry voices arguing. I looked back to the pool and drew my feet up from where they still dangled in the water, wrapping my arms tightly around my knees and immediately beginning to shiver as if the air temperature had suddenly dropped twenty degrees.

“What’s the matter with you!? Are you crazy?!?” Vik was shouting at Travis, who looked like he’d only just surfaced, about fifteen feet from where we’d gone in.

Travis pushed his bangs out of his face while treading water and opened his mouth as if he’d answer Vik, but then… it just kept opening. And opening. I didn’t know a mouth could open that far. His tongue lolled out, his lips curled back and his eyes bulged as if they’d come right out of their sockets, his face contorting in a gruesome display of excruciating agony. A moment later, a ragged, earsplitting howl escaped his throat and tore icicles up my spine. His hands shot up to clamp against his own ears and he sank straight to the bottom of the pool.

Even once he was submerged, I could swear I could still hear the screaming. A second later, a bloom of red erupted around his shadowy shape below the choppy surface.

Vik’s eyes went wide and he dove after him. I scrambled back from the edge of the pool as pandemonium broke out around me and everyone else fought to escape the water. Some girls started shrieking and other people shouted for help. My back hit the wooden edge of the deck and I looked up. Riley was standing above me, as still as a statue, his hands clenched at the sides of his dripping swim trunks.

But no, as I looked closer, I realized he wasn’t still at all. His entire frame was trembling. And his face was intensely focused into an expression of what could only be called sheer black loathing, his smoldering eyes fixed on the spot where Travis had disappeared.