“Shit – there’s two of them.” Greg’s voice was high.

The four rafters pulled hard, but all of their heads were turned as they watched the things glide in tandem through the water.

Cate felt her gorge rise from fear. But knew sharks were solitary hunters. If there were two of the things then maybe, just maybe, it meant they were something else entirely.

Jack stopped paddling to watch the water for a few seconds. He grimaced and shook his head. “Bad news – that’s not a second fin – it’s all part of the same creature, and a goddamned big one.”

Cate immediately knew he was right. “Shit. Tail fluke.” She didn’t bother looking, but instead dug her oar in deep, as they headed to the rock shelf more than five hundred feet in the distance.

The fin circled them and then tilted, angling away slightly. Cate imagined the huge, black soulless eye now staring up at them. She knew it saw them a lot better than they saw it. Its closest living relative, the Great White, could see in near complete darkness and in light. It was also one of the few aquatic animals that saw perfectly well above water.

Then twin fins started to sink, finishing with a flick of the tail as it dived.

“It’s gone,” Greg said, and then giggled a little manically. “We don’t look that interesting – too small.”

“No, it’s just gone deep,” Jack said. “Keep paddling.”

“Shit – shit – shit.” Cate cursed in time with her paddle digging into the water. Her muscles screamed but nothing else mattered.

Greg’s paddling was getting erratic. “My hands are bleeding.”

“Just, paddle, you sonofabitch,” Cate rasped back at the young man. “Don’t think about anything else.”

The four dug and pulled, dug and pulled, eating up the yards between them and the island-like outcrop of rock in the distance.

Jack started muttering. “Keep… going.” He suddenly reached for one of the flashlights in the bottom of the raft, flicked it on, and then flung it a few feet out to the side of them. It sank quickly, the dot of yellow light falling away into the depths… and then, it simply vanished as if it had been switched off, or swallowed.

“Coming up!” Jack yelled without turning.

Cate felt her scalp tingle, and had an urgent need to urinate. She knew she was going into prey-shock – the state some creatures enter as they are about to be attacked by a large predator. She gritted her teeth, hard, and prayed.