Rule of God (Book Three of the Dominium Dei Trilogy) by Thomas Greanias

all along.”
    Ludlumus nodded. “The Dei no longer wants to destroy the Church. It wants to corrupt the superstition, turn it into a real religion and merge it with Rome to last a thousand years. For that to happen, it must demand some sort of sacrifice to appease the wrath of God and his final judgment so eloquently depicted by your friend John. The sacraments, rituals and worship must be commercialized—wine, idols, temples and the like. Then they can be politicized and socialized as the official state religion of Rome. Loyalty will be one and the same to Caesar and Jesus.”
    “So you don’t intend to kill me.”
    “Kill you? You’re far too valuable to Rome for that.”
    “And what’s in the New Rome for you, Ludlumus?”
    “Young Vespasian will be Caesar, and I will be Pontifex Maximus, the head of the Church. But I will rule the empire through the young emperor.”
    “Like your father ruled through young Domitian before Vespasian arrived in Rome.”
    “And betrayed my father for his loyalty by killing him,” Ludlumus hissed. “Now I will do likewise, and not just to Domitian. Your friend John likewise will never leave Patmos alive. He will expire on his own, leaving me and Young Vespasian as the titular religious and political figureheads of the Roman Christian Empire. And your friends in Cappadocia—they can’t hole up in the caves forever under siege by our legions. At some point they’ll run out of food, then the legions will enter through Angel’s Pass and pick them off. We are done with the last apostle. It’s time for the first apostate.”
    “Meaning you,” said Athanasius.
    Ludlumus smiled. “As
Pontifex Maximus,
I will merge the Church with Rome. The empire will render unto Caesar what is his, and unto me what is mine.”
    “And if I refuse to bow to you?”
    “Then you die right here, right now,” Ludlumus said. “Consider my offer, Athanasius. Rome could use a man like you. Come to think of it, it already has, Chiron.”
    Something terrible stirred in Athanasius at the moment as Ludlumus’s taunting cut him to the heart. It wasn’t rage or hatred. It was a kind of sentence in his spirit that had been rendered, a realization that Ludlumus his enemy was absolutely correct: Athanasius had indeed discovered the final secret of the Dei: that his idea of a Christian Rome was Ludlumus’s and Rome’s all along—and certainly not Jesus’s, who plainly said his kingdom is in Heaven. If he was guilty of nothing else, it was his attempt to use the Church to his own ends as much as Ludlumus. If his enemy was certainly not the better man here, neither was he.
    “Now!” came the shout, but it did not come from Athanasius but Virtus, still bound, who charged Ludlumus with his entire body, slamming Ludlumus over the edge of the pit and tumbling in after him.
    Ludlumus’s screams rose from the pit.
    Athanasius hurled a dagger at the Roman left exposed by Virtus, driving him into the pit. Then he rushed to the edge to see only the flashing coats of the lions fighting in an orgy of feeding in the darkness below. “Virtus!”
    “I’m not long for this world, Athanasius!” came the shout. “But I will follow Ludlumus who has departed already! To God be the glory!”
    Then his voice was cut off, suddenly, and the roars began to fade.
    Helena crumbled like a pillar of salt in the middle of the arena, and Athanasius threw himself on her to shield her from a hail of arrows.
    But the arrows never came.
    Athanasius held her and looked out at the empty stands. If there were snipers still out there, they had decided to hold their fire.
    “We must leave immediately, Helena. I have to get back to the palace.”
    But she wouldn’t move. “Domitian forced himself on me. I had no choice. You were dead. You must forgive me.”
    “I know, Helena. There’s nothing to forgive. I love you. Now we must go. I have to save Stephanus.”
    “Save Stephnaus, Athanasius, or save her?”
    “Her?”
    “Ludlumus