Hello to all those who have waited so long for this update. I hope it's worth the wait! To Wandering Child 24, a Beta Reader is someone who basically just checks out your chapters before you post them and gives the author some help and ideas! If your interested, give me a shout!

A rest, at last. The Ghost of the Opera felt his body falling down into the blackness as he reached his sanctuary. Meg was out of it completely, and as he half dragged her prone form over towards his sleeping area, he wondered why the Little Ballet Dancer had shielded his injured body with her own.

He felt the dried blood on her back and sighed aloud. Almost there. His arms screamed with effort and he lifted Meg bodily into the air, his slashed stomach in utter agony as he did so. While he laid her gently onto the small divan bed that occupied the least damp part of the small cave, his vision swam in front of his eyes and he blinked rapidly trying to clear his eyes. After a moment, the dizziness passed and he staggered away as quietly as possible, so not to wake the sleeping dancer.

He laid Meg as comfortably as he could before turning and staggering over to the dying embers in the small fireplace that he had lit earlier, originally intended to heat the cave for Christine Daae. Now, however, the bed intended for the woman who has rejected him for the petty little fop Raoul de Chagny, that irritating little Vicomte who had stolen the one woman who gave his life purpose. But no more. She was gone.

Holding his stomach with both hands as a wave of pain passed through his body, the Phantom made his way to the water edge of his smaller cave. Not even Antoinette Giry knew of this cave. She had often visited him in the larger one in the pits of the Opera, bringing him food and news of the Opera goings on. He watched daily of course, but many people were missing during the day and Antoinette told him of the goings on that happened behind the scenes, so to speak.

And now he watched over Antoinette's only daughter in her absence. And what a failure he was proving at that. His stomach aching, he scrambled, half unconscious, down to the bottom of the cave, stopping to take a short gasp of air into his lungs.

Wincing, he sat down slowly, trying to prolong his consciousness before he passed out completely. He laid himself on to the ground, removing his hand from the bleeding wound on his abdomen and raising his head to look. Just as he expected: a relatively large, but superficial wound. It would become infected though if he did not attend to it accordingly.

Wincing, he closed his eyes and gripped the two sides of his wound and squeezed, biting his lips together to stop the scream of tortured agony from leaving them. Again, and again, he repeated his ministration, cleansing his wound of all possible infection, until only the blood seeped out. A wave of lightness hit him and he slept once more.

High above her, Meg Giry's mother Antoinette argued viciously with an armed police officer. She glared at him balefully, tempted to slap his face for him for his lack of respect of the situation. Her precious daughter, Little Meg, was missing from the Opera Ballet Rat's as they were playfully called, and Antoinette was beside herself, with shock and fear. What if the Phantom had her? What if she had befallen the same fate as that of Joseph Buquet? The Punjab lasso had been used many a time in the phantoms Opera. She herself had been present when it had been used. And now, her only daughter, Meg, was lost to her forever. And the infernal man in front of her simply did not seem to grasp the seriousness of her predicament.

"Please, Madam, you can not go in there! The Opera Ghost is still at large in there! We are still searching for the Vicomte de Chagny, then we will search for your sister!"

"My Daughter" Madam Giry's voice dripped with anger and her eyes were laced with a fury she would not have thought possible for her.

"Excuses-moi, madam, I must go," The police officer turned on his heels and ran in the opposite direction and it wasn't until he turned and looked at her sympathetically did she understand the young mans hurry to leave her.

Her face was dripping with tears.