Spike opened the front door slowly and crept into the house he shut the door as quietly as he could. He needed to sneak back into bed before Buffy woke up and realised he was gone.

He had crept up the first couple of stairs, when the light flicked on.

"William James Sullivan!"

He froze. Bollocks!

He turned around to face an angry Buffy with a nervous smile on his face.

"Hello Luv! What are you doing up this late?" he asked cheerfully.

"I was just about to ask you the same thing," she said frostily.

"Erm... You see Luv..." he began to explain.

"Wait! Before we do this, can you put Anne to bed? It's way too late for her to be up."

"That's not funny, Kitten." He glared at her.

"What? What's not funny?" she asked, confused.

"Buffy Luv! Tell me you're joking." His face turned white with fear.

"Spike?" She was getting extremely worried now. "Where's Anne?"

"I didn't take her with me!" he said, panicking.

"Spike! She's not in her room! I thought you'd taken her with you."

He dashed up the stairs, hoping to find her sleeping peacefully in her bed.

He found no sign of her.

"DAWN!" he bellowed and dashed into her room

A sleeping Dawn awoke with a jolt fell out of bed onto the floor.

"Ow! What?"

"Where's Anne?" he asked frantically. "Tell me you know where she is!"

"No I don't. She's missing? Oh God!" She became instantly alert and tore downstairs.

Buffy had sunk bonelessly to the floor, her body wracked with sobs.

Spike followed Dawn downstairs and went to Buffy, who was being comforted by her sister, and pulled her into his arms.

"It's alright Kitten, she'll be fine!"

"Spike. Someone took my baby!" she sobbed. "She's so tiny and defenceless, she can't take care of herself!"

"We'll find her. I'll bring her back to you. I promise!" Spike said, voice thick with emotion. He kissed her on the forehead.

"I'll bring her back!" he stared into her eyes.

He stormed out of his house, vowing that anyone who had so much as touched his daughter without his permission, would die an extremely long, painful death. Spike re-entered the house close to dawn.

Buffy jumped up and looked at him expectantly. Spike wouldn't meet her eyes, he just shook his head sadly.

She ran into his arms, and buried her face into his chest. He stroked her hair soothingly.

"I'm sorry Kitten. I looked everywhere." His voice broke with emotion.

Buffy sobbed silently into his t-shirt.

"I'm not giving up, Baby. I will not rest until I've found her."

"I believe you Spike," she sniffed

"Were you able to get any rest at all?"

"No. I can't, not until I know that she's safe."

"I'm going to go up to her room, see if I can find any clues as to who did this."

"I've already searched it twice," she cried in desperation.

He still searched the room from top to bottom, but he too found nothing.

Buffy eventually followed him upstairs to see how he was doing.

"Spike?"

"Luv... has Angel been here recently?" He queried.

He sniffed the air and wrinkled his nose.

"No. He came to visit this summer. The last thing he said to me was: 'I'm going to kill Spike for doing this to you.' I was 8 months pregnant then," she said unemotionally.

"No Luv, he's been here much more recently than that. Maybe in the last day or so."

"But why would he?"

"I don't know Luv. He's definitely been here. I'd recognise that smell anywhere."

"That smell? Angel has a smell?"

"Yeah Luv, it's like expensive aftershave and mould. How can you not notice it when you're around him?"

"Now that you mention it...Wait! We're not discussing his smell. Let's hope he knows something about Anne."

Spike didn't suggest to her that it was possible that Angel had taken Anne himself.

"I think he'd be too clever to stick around here," he said.

"Maybe the reason why you couldn't find a trace of her in Sunnydale, is because she's no longer in Sunnydale," Buffy said thoughtfully.

"Luv, pack a bag! We're going to LA." "Why are you doing this to me? Please let me go!" the young woman begged.

The monster made no reply. The baby started screaming again.

"At least untie my hands so I can see to the baby."

The woman was terrified. More scared than she had been in her whole life.

She had seen what he had done to his last victim. He had raped and tortured her for his own sadistic enjoyment. With a twisted smile on his face. She didn't think that she would ever be able to get the poor girl's screams out of her head.

Then he had devoured the body, bit by bit, piece by piece, finger by finger.

She had been unable to make herself look away and had witnessed the whole thing. Her clothes were ragged and bloody from the gore of his victim (he was a messy eater). She obviously hadn't been his first either. There were blood stains and strips of gore-soaked material strewn haphazardly round the confined room.

The monster made no reply.

"Please! I'll bargain with you. I'll give you whatever you want."

There was no response and she knew that he was completely out of his mind. There was no way that she was even getting through to him.

He untied the girl's hands from the thick stone piping and carried the baby over to her. He then stomped back up the stairs and locked and bolted the heavy iron door.

The woman did her best to comfort the distraught infant, but needed much comfort herself.

She decided that the baby was hungry and cold. There was no food anywhere in the room so she just settled with curling her body round the baby and trying to give her as much body heat as possible.

She hunched in a foetal position on the floor. She sobbed and prayed for a miracle. The two parents entered the Hyperion Hotel.

"Hmmph! That's ironic," Spike snorted.

"What?" Buffy asked, confused.

"A vampire living in a hotel named after the Greek god of the sun. I bet Peaches didn't even know that."

"Spike, please could you stop your comments. I just can't handle it today," she said, frustrated.

"I'm sorry Luv," he reached down for her hand and entwined their fingers together.

"Buffy?" a voice asked with surprise from behind them.

"Angel?" she spun round, dropped Spike's hand and rushed over to him. She threw her arms around his neck.

"Hey now! What's wrong?" he asked with concern as he hugged her back.

Spike looked away, trying to contain his jealousy.

"Angel! Someone's Kidnapped my daughter!" she cried. She pulled back and looked up at him "And what were you doing in Sunnydale?"

"I wasn't in Sunnydale," Angel said with confusion. "Whatever gave you that impression?"

"Spike said he could smell that you'd been to our house, in the last day or so."

"Spike?"

"Ahem!" Spike cleared his throat, announcing his presence to the older vampire.

Angel barely gave Spike a second glance. "I'm afraid he must've been mistaken."

"Bollocks! There is no way! I can recognise your smell anywhere, Angelus," Spike retorted.

Angel gritted his teeth. "You still haven't learned to respect your elders Childe," he spat.

Spike glared angrily back.

"Stoppit! Both of you! Can you put your differences aside and focus on finding Anne?" Buffy cried angrily.

"Who's Anne?" Angel asked sheepishly.

"My daughter," Spike growled, but bated him no longer.

"So why do you think she was taken here?" Angel questioned.

"Well, Spike looked all over Sunnydale and found nothing, then he found your scent, so we figured we'd come and find out what you were doing there and see if you knew anything about what happened to her," Buffy informed him.

Angel could see that she was very upset. He didn't like the way Spike had wrapped his arm around her and was whispering comforting things (which his vampiric hearing could pick up) in her ear.

He growled low in his throat, Spike was the only one who could hear it and glared up at him defiantly.

"I'm sorry, but Spike must've been mistaken. I haven't been in Sunnydale since the summer. It's a good idea to ask around LA though, news travels fast here," Angel said regretfully.

Buffy looked up at him with despair.

"Oh. Right. Ok." She fidgeted in frustation.

"I could put you and Spike up for the night, you could continue your search tomorrow."

"Ok. That's kind of you. I'm really tired," she yawned.

"Will you be wanting separate rooms?" Angel asked, afraid of the answer he knew she was going to give him.

"What? No. It'll be just the one room thanks," she said, embarrassed. She felt weird telling her ex that she was sleeping with another man.

Angel clenched his jaw. "Right. Of course. Follow me."