From the Cradle to the Grave

His metallic finger twitched on the trigger.

He prepared to ghost, to transfer his consciousness, to enter someone else and steal from them their body and replace their soul with his own. The silent one. Yes. He would do nicely.

Blue covered his skin and clouds of breath formed before his face as he pushed against the confines of skin and bone. In one savage tearing free of the shackles of the earthly plane, the ground of mortals, he leaped, translucent form escaping the flesh and gracing the air with its haunting presence.

One of the men straightened, touching his earpiece. He aimed his gun at where Dante had disappeared and backed away. "I've got an unstable signal," he said in a deep, professional voice, curbed with urgency.

All the other guards readied their pistols and aimed at where Dante had hidden. His celestial form floated through the air and he felt time slow his ephemeral limbs. The demon was close. He heard gears turn and oil grease them to efficiency as the camouflage fell away from his body, revealing the man with thin, gaunt cheeks and lips pursed in a tight frown and hair that hung from his head like thick black wires.

Bullets ripped through the startled man, pinning him to the corner, smearing the wall in blood and oil. A look of shock adorned the man's face, a normal reaction. Dante, while he possessed that body, had forced down the man's consciousness, only to watch it resurface after he left. The unfortunate victim knew not where he had landed, how he had arrived there, or why the officers had now killed him.

Dante glanced at the body of the robot he had killed as he brushed against the metal floor, noticing for the first time, the way her golden curls dropped when red seeped into the tips, how her blue eyes now glazed over in death, despair playing with her Greek features. She looked...human.

He rushed into one of the officers and first attacked the mind, forcing the officer's consciousness under piles and piles of celestial rubble, burying his soul, stealing his free will. He then darted to the pit of the officer, the place where the man's core of existence existed, the thing that secured his place in the tapestry of time. Twisting the thread, Dante felt the power surge through him, power to change things, power to morph and mold this man into what he wished. He had finished. His control was complete.

The world of the senses returned to him as if he were rising from a pool of water as cold as ice. He held his pistol and kept his finger on the trigger, squeezing bullet after bullet into the now lifeless body. After a moment, he ceased and straightened, observing his handiwork. He pressed his fingers to his earpiece and spoke, calling for more assistance in cleaning the mess and preparing the bodies for investigation.

The rest of the train ride passed in silence.

Just as the pedestrians left the train and journeyed onto the cold, hard pavement, a return to the world they were accustomed to seeing, Dante leapt into another host, leaving a dazed expression on the officer's face. Dante looked over his shoulder and glanced into the officer's eyes, his own glinting with mischief. The officer could not have known.

Stepping outside of the subway, the air of noise and pollution and city invaded his nostrils and engulfed his senses, and he swam in the essence of urban life.