Chapter 25
As the smell of smoke filtered down to the bottom floor, the search party that had just arrived wondered if the whole thing had just been a trap set by Stefano and that Sami was not inside the house at all.
"There's a fire!" Roman said as he moved quickly with one arm around Anna while John had an arm around Kate as they all huddled out the front door. "We've got to get out of here."
Marlena began to cry as her worry about the fate of her daughter overrode her instincts to get out of harm's way and she didn't follow them. The worry only grew as she saw a familiar and sinister presence from her past come bounding down the stairs.
"Dr. Rolf?" Marlena said as her face went white.
"Dr. Evans," Rolf nodded. "Sorry I don't have time to chat."
Rolf quickly darted past her and toward the fireplace passageway.
"Where's Sami?" Marlena cried but received no answer as Rolf disappeared through the fireplace.
Marlena wondered if she should follow him but until she realized that along with the smoke coming down the stairs was the sound of other voices.
"Sami, is that you?" Marlena whispered in disbelief.
But as unbelievable as it was, when the cloud of smoke cleared, Marlena was soon reunited with her missing daughter, however it was in the arms of the man she least expected, E.J. Wells.
"E.J., what have you done to her?" Marlena cried as she noticed Sami grabbing her swollen stomach and grimacing as he carried her.
"I haven't done anything," E.J. insisted.
"I find that hard to believe," Marlena said scowling.
"He's telling the truth, Marlena," said a woman stepping out behind them.
"Lexie?" Marlena said with a gasp.
"Yes, it's me," Lexie said. "But we don't have time to talk. Sami's gone into labor."
"Well, is she going to be all right?" Marlena said with grave concern. "Is the baby going to be all right?"
"We'll know when we get back to the cottage," Lexie said moving out of Marlena's way toward the kitchen so they could head out the mansion's back door. "Come on, E.J."
But as Sami passed by her mother, she grabbed her arm.
"Mom, there's something I have to tell you," Sami said wincing.
"Go ahead, I'm listening," Marlena said bending down to her.
"I know I've not always been the best daughter to you and especially to John, so I just want you to know that I found out the secret to his past and I hope that can make up for all the grief I've given you over the years," Sami said.
"Found out the secret?" Marlena asked. "What do you mean?"
"There's a diary upstairs," Sami whispered. "Stefano's diary. It tells all about how he came to be Stefano's pawn."
"Well, I have to get it," Marlena said thinking of the conversation she had with John on the flight to New Orleans and their previous encounter with Maison Blanche that had failed to give John the answers he so wanted to have about his past.
"Wait, Mom," Sami whimpered and then fainted, but before anyone could stop Marlena from bounding up the stairs she disappeared into the smoke.
"We can't let her go up there," E.J. said. "But I can't let Sami stay here either."
But before E.J. could make a decision, the fireplace passageway opened and Lexie's mother emerged.
"Alexandra," she called to Celeste.
"Mom, what are you still doing in here?" Lexie said in shock. "You have to leave."
"I needed to make sure you were all right," Celeste said grabbing Lexie's arm and pulling her toward the front door.
"No, Mom," Lexie said. "I need to help E.J. and Sami with their baby. I'll be all right. But you need to get out of here."
E.J. hurried, as fast as he safely could carrying a pregnant woman, while Lexie trailed behind and they disappeared through the kitchen toward the backyard cottage.
Celeste thought she should be relieved that Lexie and Sami would escape the fire, but her mind flashed back to the Tower tarot card from her reading and she couldn't shake the feeling that this fire would still be taking the lives of two people.
"Doc! Doc, where are you?" John called as he came rushing back in the house before his eyes met Celeste's. "What are you doing in here?"
Celeste was just as surprised to see him.
"John, I think Marlena is upstairs… with Lucas," Celeste said remembering her companion on her Cajun adventure. "But you have to get out of here. This house is not going to be satisfied until it has two souls."
Celeste tugged on his arm to try and get him to leave, but John didn't budge.
"If this house is going to claim two souls and one of them is Doc's then the other one sure as hell is going to be mine," John said as he hurried up the stairs into the thick smoke.
Chapter 26
Kate, Roman and Anna raced out of the front door and into the driveway toward their car, but John trailed behind them, stopping to turn around and look back at the house several times.
"Are you O.K.?" Roman asked Anna once they finally stopped running.
"Yes, I am," Anna said hugging Roman tightly. "But I just hope your daughter is."
Kate cleared her throat, peeved not only at Roman lavishing affections on an ex-wife that wasn't her but also their total lack of concern for her missing child.
"And what about Lucas?" Kate asked as she stared down Anna. "He's missing, too."
"Kate, no need to pick a fight right now," John said trying to play mediator. "We want everyone to be safe but we have no idea that Sami or Lucas were even in that house. I think this may have just been a DiMera trap and we fell right in just like the last time at Maison Blanche when me and Marlena… wait a second. Where's Doc?"
John started running back toward the mansion before anyone could stop him. To their surprise, they saw a figure come out shortly after he entered but it wasn't him.
Celeste saw them and started to run in another direction but Roman called out to her.
"Celeste?!" Roman called. "What the hell are you doing here?"
Celeste came over to them begrudgingly.
"I came for Alexandra, my daughter," Celeste said.
"Well did you come all this way by yourself?" Roman asked.
"No, I came here with Lucas," Celeste admitted.
"Lucas?" Kate said with surprise. "So that's why he got this sudden urge to head back here to look for Sami. Well, where the hell is he?"
Celeste tried to find the right words to say, but her eyes betrayed the fact that he was still in danger in the mansion.
"Where the hell is my son?" Kate said shaking her.
"OK, cool it," Anna said. "Did you and Lucas find Sami in the mansion?"
"Yes," Celeste said.
But before Celeste could explain, Roman darted into the house with the hopes of being his daughter's rescuer.
"Roman, Roman, wait…" Celeste called, but he didn't hear her.
Celeste started to run after him but Kate stopped her.
"You bitch!" Kate said slapping her across the face. "I can't believe you put my son in danger this way."
"Oh save your righteous indignation, Kate. It is not I who put Lucas in danger," Celeste said. "It was your lover, Tony DiMera."
Anna frowned hearing those words while Kate gulped with shame.
Chapter 27
Dr. Rolf came out the side of the mansion confused and disoriented at where his boss had disappeared to when his search of the secret passageway for him had come up empty.
But as he surveyed the yard and looked far in the distance, he noticed what almost looked like two men sitting beneath a tree just inside the forest that lined the grounds of the mansion.
He ran toward them and discovered it was Tony and Stefano.
Stefano was awake, but coughing when Rolf walked up to the two of them. Tony got up from tending to his father and pulled the doctor aside in the hopes they could discuss matters without upsetting Stefano's delicate condition.
"What happened?" Tony asked. "Where is everyone?"
"Well I think everyone is out of the house now," Rolf said. "Oh I guess I did knock Lucas Roberts unconscious and in my way out of there I did pass Celeste running back into the mansion and to my surprise, Marlena Evans, of all people."
Stefano's ears perked up at the mention of the two very different women he once loved in very different ways, perhaps because a part of him still did love them.
"But what about Sami and E.J. and Lexie?" Tony asked, rubbing his face with concern.
"Well once the fire started, it was like Lexie was back in Salem and worried more about what people thought of her than her devotion to this family," Rolf said with contempt. "She told me to look for Stefano while she helped the two of them escape, I guess, just because Sami started going into labor…"
"She went into labor? Now?" Tony said as the reality of the situation hit him and he paused to think of what he'd done. "This isn't good. Tell me, Rolf, how did that fire get started in the first place?"
"It was that pipsqueak, Lucas Roberts," Rolf sighed. "After you turned off the electricity, we lit some candles in the attic and that drunken fool tripped and knocked over some of them starting the bed on fire."
"Why am I not surprised?" Tony said to himself, throwing his hands up in the air.
"Now I think Lexie took Sami back to the woodcutter's cottage," Rolf said, scratching his beard with the end of the barrel of his gun. "Maybe there's still a way I could collect some of that umbilical cord blood for Stefano and…"
"No, Rolf," Tony said, shaking his head. "It's a lost cause. We'll have to find something else for my father…"
Rolf glared as he realized how soft all the DiMera children had become while Tony's voice trailed off and he turned around and noticed Stefano had disappeared. Tony wiped his face as he wondered just where Stefano could have gone. Then he looked back toward the mansion and saw Stefano at the secret door to the house and step back into the burning building.
"Dear God," Tony said. "Rolf, go fetch him and bring him back here to safety. Even if we're not going to be doing the blood transfusion from Sami's pregnancy, we can't have my father dying this way."
"I am a scientist, not a fireman," Rolf said indignantly. "And you have made it clear you do not have any use for my scientific help so I think I will go."
Tony's mouth dropped in shock as he watched Rolf walk into the forest and disappear from sight as twilight began to set in at Maison Blanche.
He started to run toward the house when he thought he heard a woman's voice calling his name and he stopped and turned around.
To his surprise, there were three women running after him. He stopped to let them catch up to him.
"Tony," Anna whispered and shook her head in disappointment as she walked up to him.
"Anna, I…" he started to say, but Tony had no explanation for his behavior, as much as he regretted it as he saw how ugly it made him in Anna's eyes.
"You bastard," Kate said as she slapped him across the face.
"You took the words right out of my mouth," Celeste said as she smiled with seething hatred looking at the man who had put her daughter, and his own sister in danger.
"Look, I know you all hate me right now, but I don't have time to listen to your lectures," Tony said. "My father is in there and I have to save him."
But Anna grabbed his arm and stopped him before he went back inside.
"Don't go, Tony," Anna said caressing his face as tears welled up in her eyes. "Marlena is already in there. And John. And Lucas. And Roman. Their lives are all in danger because of your vain attempts to save that sick, old man. And I am not going to let that monster have one more person potentially lose their life because of his evil and manipulation. Especially not when that person is you."
Chapter 28
E.J. carried Sami into the dusty and primitive one-room cottage and laid her on the bed, still unconscious after she fainted.
"Lexie, Samantha's not awake," E.J. said, his voice creaking with fear and panic. "Is she going to die?"
"E.J., you need to stay calm for her," Lexie scolded as she fetched a washcloth from a cabinet and ran it under cold water in the sink. "She is going to need your help to get through this. She's probably just unconscious right now because of the pain, and maybe that's for the best, but you need to do everything you can to distract her from that and all the chaos that's going on around here if you want her and this baby to make it. We need to keep her blood pressure stable."
Lexie handed him a cold washcloth, which he place on her forehead with one hand while the other tenderly caressed the side of her face.
"It's going to be all right, darling," he whispered in her ear and then kissed her cheek.
Sami's eyelashes fluttered and then finally opened. Her eyes locked with E.J.'s eyes as he sat on the edge of the bed looking down at her with a huge smile on his face. She smiled back, until she looked beyond that gorgeous face to see that she was in a strange place she had never been and she was once again hit with painful contractions.
"Where am I, E.J.?" Sami asked. "Where have you taken me? What have you done to me?"
She winced and writhed in the bed and pain and started to sob hysterically.
"It hurts, E.J. I can't breathe. I'm going to die," Sami said gasping for air through her cries. "I think I'm going to die. I cant catch my…"
E.J. gulped with fear but tried to calm the situation.
"O.K. Listen. Shhh. Samantha, hey, look at me. Look at me. I want you to breathe with me. O.K.? Relax. No talking," E.J. said putting his right index finger up to his lips and leaning toward her as she sat up in the bed. "Breathe."
Sami's tears began to dry up as she locked eyes with E.J. once more.
"Deep breaths. Come on. Come on," E.J. said cupping the sides of her face with his large hands as the two of them breathed together and Sami calmed down. "It's O.K. It's O.K. Deep breaths. It's O.K. It's O.K. It's O.K…"
"I couldn't breathe," Sami said as she clung tightly to the inside of E.J.'s arms. "I was so scared. I was so…"
Suddenly, Sami realized this all felt so natural, so strangely familiar, but she couldn't remember why. Nor did she really care as she stared into E.J.'s eyes as he whispered soft and soothing reassurances that everything would be all right and she desperately wanted to believe him. The two of them leaned closer and closer… and closer, until another person's voice startled Sami and broke the magic spell E.J. had cast on her.
"E.J., I don't know where you learned that stuff," Lexie said with a laugh. "But you're really good at this."
"Lexie?!" Sami said with shock.
"Were you hoping for Dr. Rolf presiding over this delivery?" Lexie said sarcastically.
"No. Not at all. It's just… I… you… YOU are going to help ME give birth?" Sami said as another series of panic set in.
"Oh calm down, Sami," Lexie said. "Look, I know we have had our differences, and you know how I feel about you, but I'm not taking that out on this baby. Not on my nephew. Or I guess I should say, MY nephew's child."
"So she was telling the truth about my father… errr… about Stefano?" E.J. whispered to Lexie.
Lexie nodded and mouthed the words, "I'm sorry." E.J. nodded back then turned his attention back to Sami.
"I don't know if you remember this or not, Sami, but Lexie helped us get out of the mansion and she has been here this whole time helping me help you get comfortable," E.J. said. "We're both going to make sure that you and this baby get through this."
"Our baby," Sami said touching E.J.'s face, before another contraction set in and she bit her lip. But this time she handled the contraction like a champ squeezing E.J.'s hand and barely letting out any sound at all.