With everyone now in college, what also came was the search for internships that would jumpstart the dream career.
Chloe and Emmeline were no exceptions, but Chloe was having a bit more luck than Emmeline was. She had met with the editor-in-chief at the Daily Planet and though the meeting hadn't been exactly what she wanted, if Chloe could bring in a good story, she had a good chance at getting a solid job. One Lionel Luthor couldn't get her fired from.
In addition to that challenge, Chloe was also dealing with a horrible roommate who didn't agree with her posting up her old Wall of Weird articles and the fact that Lana, who had been given late acceptance to Met U, was acting incredibly strange.
Emmeline decided to pay her best friend a visit to see if they could both figure out what was going on.
Clark, ever the worried boyfriend, called them up to see if they had any leads.
"We don't know what's going on with Lana," Chloe said into the phone. "But we went over to the sorority house today to say hi, and one of the pretty plastic people told us that she was still asleep…at 3:00 in the afternoon."
"Yeah, I tried calling her too, but she won't pick up," Clark answered through speakerphone. "Maybe she needs a little space."
"I don't think that's the problem," Emmeline put in. "From what I've seen, your relationship's been going great."
"Em's right," Chloe stated. "I think she's more in need of some serious deprogramming."
"What do you mean?" Clark asked.
"Well, I'm pulling up some information for a story I'm working on, and I think there's a lot more going on at that house than pedicures and pillow fights. I think you better get over here—"
Her sentence was interrupted by a knock on her dorm room door.
Emmeline answered it for her, and to her surprise, there stood Clark. Her eyebrows rose in surprise. "Wait, how did you get here so fast?"
"I was already on my way here," he told her. He pushed past her and sat down on the chair next to Chloe.
Was no one really going to question what just happened?
"What do you got?"
Chloe looked at her computer, not even mentioning his uncanny timing in the slightest. "Okay, six years ago, Tri Psi was just your regular sorority, and then their new president took over."
"Buffy Sanders."
"Yeah. After that, they became the most exclusive sorority at Met U. They get more pledges than any other Greek sorority every year, but they only choose one girl to be a part of Tri Psi."
"Lana."
"Yeah. It looks like she's a member for life. According to this, ever since Buffy Sanders took over, not one Tri Psi has ever left the sisterhood."
"Think that has something to do with the way Lana's been acting?"
"I think that there's only one way that we can be sure."
Chloe handed the both of them a flyer advertising a Tri Psi Halloween party.
"A costume party?" Clark asked with a sense of panic.
"It's the perfect cover for us to get in there and poke around."
"I hate costumes."
"Me too," Emmeline added. "Isn't there any other way?"
Chloe just shrugged her shoulders.
To Emmeline and Clark's utter disdain, Chloe forced them all to hurry and find costumes so they could attend the Halloween party that night.
Chloe dressed as a schoolgirl while Clark dressed up as Zorro.
When Emmeline said that she would just put on a t-shirt with holes and call herself a lazy college student, that didn't fly very well.
"Em, this is a sorority party," Chloe said firmly. "Sorry, but you gotta dress just a bit slutty."
"You do realize that word isn't even in my vocabulary, right?"
"Yeah, I know. I'll find something for you."
That was how Emmeline met up with them wearing a red skirt that reached to her knees with '25¢' on it and a strapless white shirt with small puffballs glued all over it so she could go as a gumball machine. Chloe put her long brown hair in a French braid for her to keep her shoulders exposed. At these kinds of parties, the more skin she had showing, the better.
When she approached, she could see Clark's eyes widen a little even beneath his mask, and her face brightened as red as her skirt.
"Uh…hey," she said quietly avoiding eye contact. "Let's just…get this over with."
With a smile, Chloe escorted them all to the door.
A sorority girl dressed as a sexy rabbit answered it. "Invitation?"
"Right, invitation," Chloe said perkily. "I had one when I was at the, um, nail salon and then, um, and then, of course, I went to get waxed and to the tanning bed, so I…" Chloe noticed the way the girl hungrily eyed Clark. "Carlos, do you remember where I put it?"
Clark didn't answer as he stared back at the girl.
"Carlos?"
He finally broke out of his reverie and looked from Chloe back to the girl. "No. No, I don't."
Chloe smiled apologetically at the girl.
"I'm not supposed to let you in without an invitation," the girl said. She smiled again at Clark. "But I won't tell if you don't…Carlos."
Chloe discreetly rolled her eyes. "Great. Okay, well…" She and Emmeline walked inside the door but stopped when they realized Clark wasn't following. Because he was smiling broadly at the sorority girl. Chloe hurriedly went back and snatched his hand. "Let's go, Carlos."
All of them went inside the house, aware that the sorority girl still had yet to take her eyes off Clark.
When they went into the main room, Emmeline tensed. Girls dressed in extremely seductive outfits danced even more seductively with various men dressed in equally seductive costumes. She wished that she could be absolutely anywhere else.
"So, uh, Carlos, huh?" Clark teased.
"It starts with a C," Chloe responded. "Don't you think the, uh, cape was a little much?"
"I kind of like it. It's not too bad. It's the mask. It slides around. I can hardly see anything sometimes."
Chloe's eyes widened when she saw Lana, dressed as a cat, seductively dancing with a guy dressed as a cowboy. She frantically turned to Clark before he saw her too. "Why don't you check upstairs, see if you can find anything? I'll scope things out down here."
"If you see Lana—"
"I'll let her know that you're here."
Clark hurried upstairs to see what he could find on Buffy or the other sorority girls while Chloe went over to Lana and yanked her away from the cowboy. The both of them started up the stairs to talk, and Emmeline was just about to follow them when someone grabbed her wrist.
"Gumball machine, huh?" a shirtless guy smirked as he pulled her towards him. "Well, I sure would like a piece of you."
"Let go," Emmeline said. She knew this costume had been a bad idea.
The man put his arm around her waist. "Now why would I want to do that?"
Channeling the incredible amount of frustration she'd experienced in the last few weeks, Emmeline put her hands on his chest and pushed him away just enough for her to get some room to slap his face. "I said let go."
The man's smirk went away. "And I said I didn't want to."
Tightly clinging onto her, he pushed her onto the couch in the room and climbed on top of her. She pushed on his chest again to no avail.
"Get off me!" she cried. "Help! Please, stop!"
No could hear her pleas over the loud music.
The man leaned down and ran his tongue across her cheek as she whimpered. His hand slowly ran up her hip, taking some of her skirt with it.
"What do you think you're doing?!"
Within the next second, the man had been flung off her. She quickly stood up from the couch and wiped her cheek. When she realized that once again, Clark was her savior, she was grateful, but she really wished she didn't constantly have to be saved by him. She was bordering on pathetic.
"Leave her alone," Clark said to the man in a deadly serious tone.
The man just smirked again and walked off.
Clark turned to face Emmeline as she quickly got off the couch. "You okay?"
"Yeah, thanks."
He turned his head for a moment as if he appeared to be listening to something. Then he grabbed Emmeline's wrist and exclaimed, "Come on!" They took off up the stairs.
For all the things Emmeline expected to stumble upon, seeing Lana biting Chloe on the neck was definitely not one of them.
Lana looked up at them with frenzied eyes and bloodstained teeth set in a sick grin.
"Lana?" Clark said in surprise.
Lana tossed an unconscious Chloe towards him, and Clark caught her in his arms. Two holes sat right on her neck dripping blood.
Lana slowly backed up to the window before disappearing.
Emmeline looked at Clark with wide eyes.
Was Lana Lang really a vampire?!
Clark and Emmeline rushed Chloe to the nearest hospital for the bite to get treated. However, the results left the doctor dumbfounded, and Chloe's condition did not improve.
The both of them looked at her unconscious in the hospital bed, still baffled by how exactly she had gotten there.
"Frankly, I don't know what else to try," the doctor told them honestly. "We've given her a transfusion, but there's been no improvement."
"What's wrong with her?" Clark asked.
"Well, as near as we can tell, she's been infected with some sort of…rabies-like virus. It was probably transmitted through the saliva of whatever animal bit her. It's attacking her red blood cells, preventing them from regenerating."
"Is there anything you can do?"
"We can keep up the transfusions and hope she stabilizes. I'm sorry."
The doctor put the clipboard on the monitor and left the room.
Emmeline went to the side of the bed and took Chloe's hand in her own.
Clark slowly approached the end of the bed. "You have to fight it, Chloe," he said softly. "You have to fight it."
"Is she all right?"
Both of them turned to the door and found a man staring into the room. Emmeline didn't know him, but it appeared Clark did.
"Professor, what are you doing here?" he asked.
"Visiting a sick colleague," the professor answered. "Though he seems to be doing better than your friend." He looked over at Emmeline. "And who might you be?"
"Oh, Em, this is one of my professors at CKU, Professor Fine. Professor, this is my friend, Emmeline."
Emmeline smiled shyly. "Clark talks a lot about you. It's nice to finally meet you."
"Likewise," the professor answered.
Emmeline's stomach flipped a little when she met his eyes. They looked so…cold. And they seemed to be sizing her up as if considering what he should do with her. It really freaked her out, but it didn't seem like Clark noticed.
"What happened to her?" he finally asked Clark referring to Chloe.
"She was bitten," Clark told him.
"By what?"
"I know how this is gonna sound, but I think she was attacked by a vampire."
"Clark, there's no such thing as vampires."
"I know what I saw, Professor. She's lost a lot of blood, and the transfusion didn't work because she's infected by some weird strain of…rabies."
"Rabies?" Professor Fine came into the room and examined the chart the doctor had left behind. "You might wanna have a word with your buddy, Lex Luthor."
"Lex?"
"Yeah, ask him about Project 1138."
"You got that just from looking at Chloe's chart?"
"I recognize the symptoms from my research at LuthorCorp. Now, you wanna stand around here playing 20 Questions or you wanna save your friend's life?"
Clark quickly hurried out of the room to find Lex and get some answers so he could save both Lana and Chloe.
Professor Fine looked up at Emmeline with a smooth smile. "I have a feeling she'll be okay. Clark is nothing if not persistent. Though he could sometimes choose better friends."
"Clark isn't friends with Lex anymore if that's what you're insinuating," Emmeline said.
"He may say so, but a friendship that lasted that long isn't simply cut off by a few words."
"He stayed for a lot longer than most people would have because Clark chooses to see the good in people."
"Oh, I know. That might come back to hurt him someday."
If she wasn't mistaken, Emmeline could've sworn he smirked, like he knew some big secret she didn't. A lot of that seemed to be going around lately.
"It was nice meeting you."
Emmeline nervously watched him go. She hoped she was wrong about this uneasy feeling, but her gut rarely ever betrayed her.
She looked down at Chloe, her eyes pulled to the two holes in her neck. "Clark's going to help you. We both are."
Knowing that waiting around the hospital room for something to happen was pointless, Emmeline decided to head back to the sorority house and see if she could talk some sense into Lana. Hopefully without all the frenzied bloodlust, she'd be a bit easier to talk to and wouldn't suck her blood too.
After arriving at the house, she saw that the front door was still open. Why, she didn't know, but she wasn't going to question her luck. She started up the steps and peeked inside where she saw Lana laying a weakened Clark in front of the fireplace. Had Lana bitten him already?!
"Nice work," Buffy said as she walked in followed by her three loyal members. "He's quite a catch. One hundred percent corn-fed Kansas beef. Let's eat."
Emmeline ducked behind a bush to avoid being seen. She hoped they couldn't smell her.
Lana got up and walked towards them. "Wait, isn't there something else we can do with him?"
"Like what? Barbecue?"
"No, like convert him. Into one of us."
Buffy and her friends started laughing.
"We're a sorority, not a fraternity," one of them said as if speaking to a child.
"No boys allowed," another added.
"You don't understand," Lana said firmly. "He's special."
"Not to me," Buffy smirked. "Get out of the way."
She started towards Clark, but Lana firmly grabbed her arm. "No."
Buffy yanked her arm out of Lana's grasp. "Excuse me."
"He's mine. You're not touching him."
Buffy laughed mockingly before whacking Lana in the face, sending her flying and rolling out onto the porch. Emmeline ducked further behind the bush.
Buffy crouched down and hissed as she made her fangs grow. "I'm really disappointed in you, Lana. Looks like you're not Tri Psi material after all."
Just as Buffy lunged at Lana, heat came from Lana's eyes and disintegrated the other vampire. Emmeline's eyes widened. How in the world had she just done that? Heat vision wasn't exactly a power vampires were known for. And it was clear Buffy didn't have that power or she would've used it long before now. So why did Lana have it while none of the other vampires did?
Lana stood up and walked back inside the house towards the other three girls who looked more than a little nervous. "Looks like I'm making the rules now. Anyone have a problem with that?"
The girls all chorused their panicked congratulations and praises.
"Get out. Get out!"
All of them quickly hurried out of the house, passing right by Emmeline. When the coast was clear, she came out of her hiding place and quietly walked inside the house, taking off her shoes to make sure that Lana couldn't see or hear her.
Lana knelt down by Clark's side and ran her hands through his hair. "Clark. Clark, it's okay. I'm here."
"Listen to me," Clark said weakly. "You're sick."
"No. No, I'm not. I've never felt better. Clark, I know what's inside of you. I've felt your strength. And now I want you to feel mine."
"No. No, this is not who you are."
"But maybe it is. Maybe I've been hiding it from you all along. Just like you were hiding who you really are from me."
"No, please."
"Clark, don't fight it. We're meant to be together. You know that in your heart. And this way we can be. Forever. All it takes is one drop of blood."
"Lana, no."
Lana made her fangs appear and slowly cut her tongue with her nail.
While she made her little soliloquy, Emmeline silently came up behind her. I'm sorry, Lana, she thought. She took one of her shoes in her hand and hit Lana on the side of the head as hard as she could. Like she suspected, it didn't do much damage with her vampiric strength, but it was enough to stun her and knock her a couple feet from Clark.
Emmeline ran to Clark's side. "Hey, you okay?"
Her eyes widened at the bite mark on his neck. She was too late.
Clark moved his hand, and she saw he was gripping a large syringe filled with bright green liquid. "In the heart," he mustered out.
Emmeline whipped the cap off the syringe.
Lana whipped around to look at Emmeline with killer eyes. "You," she growled.
She lunged towards her, but Emmeline quickly turned around and plunged the long needle directly into Lana's heart. Lana screamed in agony as she pushed the liquid inside her.
Just seconds after she extracted the needle, Lana passed out onto the floor.
Emmeline turned back to Clark. To her astonishment, the bite mark on his neck had disappeared.
Clark sat up, looking a thousand times better than he had a few seconds ago.
"Looks like this time, I saved you," Emmeline smiled.
When Emmeline went to visit Chloe in her dorm room, her blonde friend pulled her right back out.
"Come on!" she said excitedly. "We are going to go out to the fanciest restaurant and order whatever our hearts desire."
"Why? What's the occasion?"
Chloe smiled broadly. "I got a job at the Daily Planet."
Emmeline laughed and happily hugged her. "Oh, my goodness, that's fantastic!"
"Can you believe it?! I'm working at my dream job! I mean, I'm starting in the basement, but I don't even care. I'll work my way up just like any other employee."
"I'm so happy for you! You deserve this."
"How's the internship hunt going for you?"
Emmeline sighed. "I've applied to several places, but I haven't gotten anything yet."
"I could use my connections and see if I can find something."
"Thanks, but I really want to be able to do this on my own."
"I understand that. You'll find one. And if anyone is smart, they'll be happy to take you on."
"I'm hoping a couple of my psych professors will help me find something. I really want to find something where I can help people with meteor abilities."
"I doubt those people are willing to share that they have powers."
"Yeah, I know. But I know a lot of them just need someone to talk to who won't judge them. I wish I could give them that."
"Well, now you can say you have experience dealing with vampires."
"Yeah, about that, there's something I just don't understand. Clark's bite mark healed within seconds after I gave Lana the serum. But yours is still there. It's barely noticeable by now, but it stayed for days after you were bitten. And then there's Lana suddenly having heat vision. Why was she the only vampire to get that, and why did it not appear until after she allegedly bit Clark?"
"You know, if I had answers to the all of the 'Whys' that happen to us, I would've gotten into the Daily Planet much sooner and started on the top floor rather than the basement."
"I hate not understanding. Maybe one day it'll all make sense."
Chloe bit her bottom lip. She absolutely hated having to hide the truth about Clark from Emmeline, and she knew that he did too. But it was for her safety, and they both knew it.
However, with the way things were going, Emmeline was getting closer and closer to finding out his secret, and Chloe wasn't sure how long the both of them could keep her from discovering the truth.
