Summary: Jacob needs to get as far away from Washington as he possibly can. He doesn't know where he's going, but he finds a very special someone when he gets there. Eventual Jacob/Kurt.

A/N: So glad you all liked the last chapter, but that's kind of the end of the fluffy-phase. Sadface. There's some not-so-happy-but-exciting things are going to happen from now on... mwa ha ha. I feel so evil right now, it's not even funny.

Imprint

21: Cold

"Took you long enough," Puck complained as he pulled on the offered pair of jeans held out to him. "And by the way, I totally smelled vampire out there. It's like this awful burning acidic smell, and the most horrible—"

"You smelled a vampire?" Jacob asked, cutting Puck off midsentence. "Where?"

Puck shrugged, grabbing a running shoe from the truck bed and jamming it onto his now too-large feet. "On the outskirts of the forest, but that's not the point." He stood straight staring down at his bare ankles despondently. "Have I gotten taller?"

"A little. It's a side effect of the change," Jacob said offhandedly, waving his hand around to change the subject. "I don't smell a vampire."

"Well, like I said, it was way on the outskirts. I had a pretty long time to go exploring while you ditched me to hang out with your boyfriend," Puck said, slamming the driverside door open and ducking to get inside.

Jacob laughed, getting into the passenger's seat and raising his hands in defence. "You told me to get lost, dude, not the other way around. Besides, would you really want to hang out with me and Kurt?"

Puck made a face, pulling out onto the road and rolling his eyes. "No. I might be okay with you dating the guy, but I don't want to have to hang out with him. It would pull down my rep so much more than just being in glee club has done." He paused, sighing. "I'm going to need new shoes. My feet hurt."

The afternoon passed uneventfully, in which a startled Mrs. Puckerman demanded her son go buy himself some new jeans that actually fit him, baffled by his recent growth-spurt. When shopping was finished (a short stop at Wal-Mart and Giant Tiger was all it took to basically restock Puck's wardrobe in the proper sizes), the boys ate left-over pizza and played videogames until their eyelids drooped.

Jacob missed the great night's sleep he had gotten on Puck's bed when he was once again forced to take the air mattress, but he didn't mind it so much after Puck found the air pump and re-inflated it to its former glory. He fell asleep with a smirk on his lips, dreams of Kurt's mischievous smile keeping him company on the bitter cold Ohio night.

Kurt shivered, opening his eyes and blinking up at the gray ceiling in confusion. It was obviously still dark out— the small basement window showed a blackened night sky, the soft crescent of a moon visible through a break in the curtains. Why had he woken up in the middle of the night? He strained his ears listening for the phone, or any other kind of sound that could have woken him.

Something shockingly cold brushed his shoulder, and he jumped as a trail of goose bumps appeared on his pale skin. He turned his head and opened his mouth to scream, but an ice-cold hand over his mouth stopped any noise from escaping.

"Shh, little one. Don't want to go waking up your father, would you?"

That's exactly what he had been trying to do, the instant he saw a strange person stretched out on the mattress beside him, but he didn't mention it to her as she brushed her icy fingers across his forehead, tucking his sleep-mussed hair to the side.

"Hush. Do as I say and I won't kill your daddy," she whispered, her voice soft and sweet, but strangely terrifying.

Kurt's eyes were wide with fear as she removed her hand from his mouth, but he still tried to call out as soon as his muffle was removed. She thrust her hand back over his moth, somehow now holding one of his scarves in her other hand and waving it tauntingly above him. He turned away as she moved the scarf towards his face, but she grabbed his chin and turned it back so that he was looking up at her, a malicious glint in her eyes as she used it to gag him, trying it around his head.

After he had been properly shut up, she trailed her fingers down his neck, stopping to press at the fluttering pulse point in his throat. He gasped through the gag, and she pressed down on his throat, constricting his air pipe.

"Agreed?"

He nodded, tears forming in his eyes and blurring the outline of her beautiful face.

And she was beautiful, in a strikingly intimidating way; her skin was pale and smooth to the point of perfection, her features all proportionate and sharp, angular. Her hair was short, so that it swished around her chin in silver-blonde waves as she sat up, pulling her with him. But what was most shocking were her eyes, deep, dark blood-red with a burning behind them that was both powerful and ghastly.

She moved with a feline grace that Kurt couldn't appreciate because his torso was shaking with silent sobs and choking fear that gripped his chest like her icy fingers gripped his arm, pulling him from his bed to stand barefoot on the concrete floor.

Her movements were silent as she pulled him through the basement, and the thing that bugged Kurt the most about her was that he couldn't hear her breathing. He prided himself on having highly trained auditory senses— his own breathing was loud and laboured, breaking the silence every time he took a shuddering breath. But she made no sounds, even as her foot hit that creaky step halfway up the staircase; her steps were so light she barely touched the ground.

He might've been able to overlook the obvious weirdness of the situation—the fact that there was a woman in his bed, threatening to murder his father, guiding him through the silent house in the middle of the night— if she had been breathing. If she had been a part of some kind of robbery scheme, he might have bought it. Send the woman to shush the kid; it made sense. What didn't make sense was the cold grip of her fingers on his arm as she tugged him into the foyer, too cold.

He stopped dead in his tracks when his eyes caught a gleam in the living room. Over the back of the sofa, clearly visibly from his position in the foyer, the back of a middle-aged balding head could be seen, a trickle of red running down the side to pool around the owner's ear. Kurt made a distressed noise at the back of his throat, trying to pull away from the... the thing's icy grip to lunge at his unconscious father.

"Ah, ah, ah," she said quietly, yanking him close to her side. "He's alive. For now." She chuckled, the sound low and menacing. Kurt whimpered, his eyes watering once more. Her weapon of choice lay broken on the floor behind the couch, a family photo in a heavy wooden frame, the glass now cracked down the middle, the frame broken on a diagonal.

She pulled Kurt close to her side, leaning forward to whisper menacingly in his ear. "Don't make me change that."

Kurt was much more compliant to her directions after he'd seen the actual threat. He hadn't been given any explicit proof that his father was still alive (she could have staged his dead body to look like he had been ambushed and knocked out while dozing on the couch, after all), but Kurt refused to believe that his father, the only family he had left in the world, was dead on their living room sofa.

The front door was opened, and Kurt was pulled onto the porch, the night's frigid air hitting his skin and causing him to shake more violently. Head spinning, he barely noticed when she pushed him into the backseat of his Navigator, hopping into the front seat and starting the car, the powerful engine's hum breaking the silence.

The last thing Kurt thought before he passed out— from shock, from fear, who knows— was that he hoped that this was all just a very bad dream, and that his knight in shining armour would come to save him. Jacob, where are you? I'm scared.