Page 136 of In Between Death and the Devil

“My name is Sasha.” Her name tickled something in my memory. I’d heard it before somewhere. “I was Death’s Successor before you.”

“But that… that’s not possible. Death shredded her Successor’s soul.” That was what Fen had told me.

“That’s what it looked like, but it’s not what happened.”

I had the sense of the ground falling out from under me. There could only be one Successor at a time. “If you’re still alive, then how am I here?”

“Alive is a relative term.” She sighed. “I’m sure Fen has told you about the night he became the Devil.”

An ache flared in my chest at his name, followed by a pull so faint I might have imagined it. I pushed it away, not ready to think about him yet, and I nodded, my whole head bobbing up and down.

“When a soul is shredded, energy is released. To most people, it looks like a burst of light, but to Death or the Devil it’s something they can feel. Even absorb. Fen wasn’t the Devil yet when Death attacked me, so he couldn’t have known that what he was seeing was an illusion. Instead of shredding me, she transformed me into a salamander. She used her power to pin me in place until the confrontation was over. Then she drained my soul’s essence until there was very little left, not enough to be Death’s Successor. I’m a husk of what I was.” She sounded almost unbothered, like she was reporting facts rather than relating a traumatic event. A hundred years had passed since then, but I suspected her distance was a coping mechanism. Some wounds never truly closed.

“Death drained your essence like a Wraith?” I shivered despite the heat.

“She didn’t drink it like they do, but the effect was the same.”

“Why would she do that?” It was so wrong.

“Because without the Death Chord with her Devil, her power is limited to what she can generate on her own from transferring souls back to the World of the Living. She drained him, too, before she destroyed him. I think she was storing as much as she could, knowing what she was giving up.”

I felt a spark of anger. What was it with feeding on people? Death had fed on Sasha. Fen fed on the pain of souls in the Dungeon. Both created power. They were supposed to be helping souls, not using them for their own gain. As quickly as it had risen, the spark fizzled out, replaced with a heavy weariness that made me want to curl up and go to sleep. I resisted, needing to hear what Sasha had to say.

“So, you joined the salamander ranks,” I said.

“No. The salamanders here were just regular salamanders when Death turned me into one. I was the first one of my kind.”

“So, the rest of them are just⁠—”

“No, the regular salamanders disappeared fifty years ago. They’re now all like me.”

“Where did the rest come from?” Dread and disgust made it difficult to swallow. I had a feeling I knew where this was headed.

“Judges and trainees. Death drained a few at a time over the years, turning their souls into husks and then transforming them into salamanders. They have just enough awareness to report to her everything they see.”

“She turned them into spies,” I said. The realization was staggering. A solution both elegant and efficient. And horrifying. “That means she knows everything that goes on in both castles.” I thought about Bea, about how proud Fen had been to install a spy in Death’s castle. It had all been for nothing. Though if Death knew about Bea, why had she left her alone all this time?

“Not everything. She’s not omniscient. Just anything a salamander has witnessed.”

Anxiety tried to find a foothold in my chest as my mind whirled, but I was too tired to hold onto it and my thoughts slowed. There was no way to know what Death knew or didn’t. Bea knew the risk she was taking when she volunteered for the position. Besides, it wasn’t my problem anymore. “If the salamanders have limited awareness, how are you talking to me now?”

“I think she didn’t take as much from me as she did the others because I was the first, and then she regretted it, because I refused to go anywhere near her after my transformation. The next salamander that appeared couldn’t or wouldn’t talk to me. None of them do.” She sounded sad. If what she said was true, that meant she’d been unable to talk to anyone for a hundred years.

“How do they communicate with Death then?”

“From what I can tell, she’s the only one they communicate with.” She made a movement that might have been a shrug.

“Then how would they be a danger to me? I tried to get their attention and they all ignored me. It was like I wasn’t even there.” I blinked, my eyelids feeling heavy. The exhaustion I’d been holding off was too heavy to ignore much longer.

“That’s because they don’t expect you to show up in the fire network, so they didn’t look closely. They probably thought you were me. If you keep trying, they’ll notice that you’re new, and different. Best to stay away from them.”

I bobbed my head once, and my eyes closed of their own volition. Forcing them open, I saw Sasha’s tongue flick out.

“Stay here as long as you need to,” she said. “I’m going to do some reconnaissance. I’ll be back when you wake up.”

I almost argued with her. There was more we should talk about, and part of me worried about being left alone, but the rest of me was too tired to argue. Curling up on the warm rock, I tucked in my tail, closed my eyes, and fell straight to sleep.

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