| Diego Salamanda | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Vital statistics | |
| Title | Diego Salamanda |
| Gender | Male |
| Race | Human |
| Faction | None |
| Health | Ill - deformed at birth |
| Level | None |
| Status | Deceased |
| Location | None |
"Matt Freeman: Why did you do if? You're rich. You have all these houses. You've got a huge business. Why isn't it enough?
Diego Salamanda: You're a child or you'd understand. There's no such thing as enough! Do you have any idea how much I hate you?
Matt Freeman: Hate is all you have
~ Matt Freeman and Diego Salamamda
Diego Salamanda is the main antagonist in Evil Star. It is revealed in Nightrise that he is an agent of the Nightrise Corporation and this explains his motive of hunting down the Gatekeepers, to allow The Old Ones to be released.
Evil Star[]
Salamanda's main purpose is to get the diary belonging to St Joseph of Cordoba because he knows this will gain him supernatural powers, and he bids for it in London and pays an enormous sum of money to tempt William Morton, the book owner. However, he has Fabian, a member of Nexus, as a spy who tells him when Morton goes to the Church of St. Meredith's to meet Matthew "Matt" J. Freeman, and he sends an assassin to kill Morton when he has the chance and steals the diary.
He has three main bases: one not far from Lima, another in the desert up by Nazca, and another in the desert itself, where he finally operates the satellite which is the title object of the book.
Salamanda pursues Matt and Pedro through the entire book, and he doesn't seem to let Matt's disguises barricade him from his mission: he straightaway knows that Matt and Pedro are the Gatekeepers when he sees them in his farmhouse, because he says he can "feel their presence."
Salamanda also seems to have a good understanding of astronomy, because he knows about the lacking star Cygnus that will open the gate in Nazca and therefore he is replacing the star with his own satellite - the evil star of the title. Diego Salamanda tries to kill Matt with a pistol, but using his powers, Matt thrusts the bullets away but two bounce back at Salamanda, who gets hit by the bullets in the chest and dies when he falls as his neck breaks from the weight of his enlarged skull.
Nightrise[]
In book three he briefly appears talking to the Chairman of the Nightrise Corporation and the other agents all around the world. He comments about how the project to open the gate in the Nazca desert is going.
Appearance[]
Salamanda is one of the victims of artificial cranial deformation which requires squeezing a "special" baby's head from birth so it looks abnormally deformed. Even Pedro, who is used to deformity and disease, calls Salamanda a "freak," and also says he was "evil" and says Salamanda makes him "want to be sick."