Sins of Eden by S.M. Reine

wanted it to stop burning, so his godly will had made a tsunami.
    “Fuck me,” Elise swore.
    That was all she managed to say before it all crashed over her.
    A fist of water punched into her. She thought that it might have slammed her into a wall, or maybe the street; she couldn’t tell where she was or which direction was up anymore.
    Elise phased, turning herself to smoke. It didn’t help.
    She struggled to the surface, moving her semi-corporeal form through the tide as it smashed over buildings, crushed streets, vaporized the fire.
    As soon as she touched air, it became easier to spread herself out as the darkness. And there was quite a lot of darkness in the village. The fires had been drowned under hundreds of feet of water, and Russia was now an ocean as far as she could see.
    The hotel was under it, too. The hotel and everyone inside.
    Her mother. Abram, with the blood of Adam.
    James.
    Elise plunged into the water again, seeking out the wreckage of the hotel among the rest of the flotsam. It was shockingly dark within Nathaniel’s wave, filled with shattered fragments of wood and stone, but she couldn’t traverse it as easily as she traversed air. She’d never tried to phase through so much water before. She couldn’t seem to do it.
    Elise glimpsed the door of the hotel before the waves swept her away from it. Away from the fading mental signals of the people inside.
    No!
    And then she was standing in the middle of the street, right in front of the hotel, and there was no water anywhere.
    Just like that, the ocean had vanished.
    Nothing looked even remotely damp. Nothing except Elise. Water drizzled from her hair and clothes, leaving a puddle at her feet. It smelled like brine and apples.
    The village was burning again. In fact, the fire had advanced. But the buildings that had been crushed by Nathaniel’s wave were standing again and the hotel was intact beside Elise. She could feel everyone alive inside. James’s mind was almost indistinguishable from the others—just a mortal mind overwhelmed by the power of the werewolves that accompanied him.
    “Nathaniel?” she called.
    Belphegor appeared beside her. “Hello, Godslayer.”
    Her obsidian falchion leaped to her hand. Its textured hilt was sure in her slick palm. “Belphegor.”
    “You won’t be able to kill me here,” he said calmly, undisturbed by her suggested death threat. And why should he worry? He’d been more powerful than Elise before penetrating Eden. Now he was something else completely.
    “I am the Godslayer,” Elise said. “I can get creative.”
    She sensed faint amusement from him, even if she couldn’t see it in his face. Belphegor was in a good mood and it radiated. “I’ll give you one free shot. Try to kill me. I assure you that I won’t fight back.”
    Elise studied him out of the corner of her eye. He was still wearing the slim-fitting black uniform of a steward, the one with the silver pin marking his allegiance to the Palace’s last administration. His slender, skeletal hands were folded in front of him.
    He flickered. The suit briefly became spiked armor with a velvet cape and the head of a human slave dangling from the belt at his waist.
    Then he was in the suit again.
    “You’re not really here,” Elise said.
    “I’m still within Eden. You’ll have to enter the garden to kill me.”
    “Fine. Not the first time I’ve done it.”
    “While I appreciate your bloodthirstiness, I’d like to make an alternate proposal.” He swept a hand up the burning street. “Will you walk with me?” So civil. As if he hadn’t once chained her to his office wall and threatened her with a studded phallus.
    “Nathaniel,” she said. “I have to find him.”
    To her surprise, Belphegor said, “I agree. Please, let’s discuss this. Consider ourselves at a detente.”
    “The entire fucking world is burning. Some detente.”
    The fires vanished. The sky cleared of smoke. Even the broken wall of James’s room at the hotel