No One Like You, Chapter 8

Clark/Chloe
Season 5, after "Fanatic"
Rating: Adult. If you're under eighteen, please go elsewhere now.
Disclaimer: These characters belong to the WB and DC Comics, not to me.
Read this story from the beginning.
Read the previous chapter.

"No... please... please..."

The creature paid no attention to Clark's desperate pleas. The razor-sharp claws dug into his back, knocking him to the rough, rocky ground. He fell, rolling over onto his back and raising his hands in an instinctive effort to protect himself. He reached for the creature, trying to grasp the great jaws and keep the terrible teeth away from him. But in the way of dreams, the creature simply melted out of his hands.

And yet the teeth were still there, and just beyond them he could see what looked and smelled like the fires of hell. A deep, rolling voice echoed in his mind.

Don't fight it. You're mine.

"Nooo!" he screamed. He continued to batter at it with all his strength, but his blows somehow passed through it as if it had no more substance than the fog.

Paying no heed to his efforts at resistance, the creature lowered its head, its teeth gleaming, and bit savagely into his shoulder.

Despite the dagger-like sharpness of the teeth, it didn't hurt, but he felt the awful sensation of something being sucked from him. My blood, he thought, his stomach twisting as nausea surged inside him. It's a vampire... it's sucking the life out of me... oh, God...

But slowly he realized it wasn't sucking away his blood. It was drawing something deeper from him, something more important, something beyond the physical. Something in his very essence was being stripped away from him, consumed by the creature. It didn't hurt, exactly, but the sensation of loss left him with a terrible emptiness.

He screamed in terrified protest and agonized panic, striking helplessly at the creature. His blows seemed to strike empty air.

"No! Leave me alone!"

The horrible sensation continued. There was nothing he could do to stop it, no way of protecting himself. He sobbed at the loss of something he couldn't bear to lose, something so deeply a part of him that his soul ached with pain as the something was drawn from him.

At last the creature lifted its head and looked down at him for a moment, its eyes glinting red. Slowly, it turned and lumbered away, disappearing into the fog.

Clark lay on his back, gasping for breath. The fog rolled around him, closing in on him, shrouding him. He threw an arm over his face, covering his eyes, and shuddered violently. Panic and horror and anguish all mixed together inside him, along with a desperate need for whatever it was he'd lost.

Slowly his gasps turned to sobs, and then to long, miserable wails, as he mourned the loss of something he couldn't even name.

*****

"Clark. Wake up."

Slowly the dreamscape drifted away, and he became aware that Chloe was shaking his shoulder. He opened his eyes, finding himself in a grassy field, the tall summer grass golden in the afternoon sunlight.

"Chloe," he whispered.

She leaned over him, staring into his eyes, and at the familiar, sympathetic face, the knot of horror in his chest slowly began to ease. "You were having a nightmare," she said, very gently. "Was it another of the dreams?"

"I..." He shut his eyes, aware that they were burning with tears. "It wasn't just a nightmare, Chloe. I don't know what it was. There was something... something terrible... and it took... it took..."

He struggled desperately to find words to describe what he'd lost, but he couldn't. He frowned, trying to remember what the terrible creature had taken from him, or what he was doing here with Chloe.

He opened his eyes to look around for clues, and slowly it dawned on him that they were twined around each other in an empty field. Her arm was wrapped around him possessively, his leg rode up between hers, and the unmistakable smell of male come and female arousal still hung in the air.

Oh, God. God.

He'd made love to Chloe Sullivan.

And he didn't remember any of it.

Read Chapter 9 here.