Darkus’s feet thumped the pavement as he ran. Baxter flew beside him.

Virginia’s long legs easily matched Darkus’s, pace for pace, but eventually she called out, “Slow down!”

“We’ve got to tell the police,” Darkus gasped. “She’s got Dad.”

“Darkus, stop!” Virginia ordered, coming to a halt.

He ran on for a few steps, then squatted to catch his breath.

“You can’t leave Bertolt behind,” Virginia added.

“What?”

“He was hiding behind the blue van. Look, he’s trying to catch up.”

“There’s no time, we need to—”

“What we need to do is think this through before we do anything crazy. How do we know the police will help us? They haven’t so far.”

“She’s got him in a cell!” Darkus said angrily. “We’ve got to get him out of there!”

“You’re bleeding”—Virginia leaned over him to look—“all down the back of your neck.”

“Doesn’t matter.” Darkus checked to see if Baxter was still flying overhead. “I’m fine. We need to rescue Dad.”

“Darkus, there’s a massive splinter in your neck!” Virginia put a hand on his shoulder and, without warning, whipped the shard of wood out.

“Ahh!” he cried out, and his neck began to bleed in earnest.

“You’re hurt!” Bertolt wheezed, finally catching up and sinking to the ground beside Darkus.

“It must’ve been a splinter from the lift.” Darkus put his hand up to his neck. “Lucretia Cutter shot something at me. She missed, but it smashed into the wood behind me.”

“She shot at you?” said Bertolt, aghast, as Newton zoomed up out of his hair, flickering angrily.

“She didn’t have a gun.” Darkus thought about what had happened in Towering Heights. “She was pointing one of her canes at me.”

“Bloody hell!” Virginia said.

Darkus looked at the blood on his hand. “She’s a monster, and she’s got Dad locked in a cell underground.”

He told them about the library, and Novak, about how she took him through the secret passage to the two-way mirror, about the photograph of his father on Lucretia Cutter’s desk, about how brave Novak had been when they got caught and how she’d helped him escape back to the lift, about finding the room of angry insects with the yellow ladybugs, and then about how he’d heard his father’s voice.

“You saw your dad?” Bertolt was visibly upset by what he was hearing.

“I didn’t see him,” Darkus said quietly. “I heard him. I called out, and he heard me.” He swallowed. “He called out my name, and then that stinking butler dragged me backward through a door and hit me over the head.”

“That stinking butler may have saved your life,” Virginia pointed out.

“What about the beetles?” Bertolt asked. “Why does she want them?”

“I still don’t know,” Darkus admitted. “She said something about them belonging to her and wanting them back. She wants to keep them secret. She said she wasn’t ready yet. But I don’t know what that means, and then she said she wouldn’t let anyone stop her . . .” Darkus paused. “I don’t know what’s going on, but I think Dad may have been trying to stop Lucretia Cutter from doing whatever it is that she’s planning to do.”

“But what we do know is that she’s coming for the beetles tomorrow morning,” Virginia added.

“Tomorrow?!” Bertolt squeaked. “That’s not much time!”

Virginia nodded. “I know.”

“This is bad.” He blinked. “This is very bad.”

“There’s something else.” A horrifying image flashed into Darkus’s mind, of a swirling skirt and a giant serrated claw. He shuddered.

“Lucretia Cutter . . .” He stopped, not knowing how to put into words what he’d seen. “After she hurt Novak, she turned to leave, and her skirt sort of lifted up, and it looked like . . . I mean, I think I saw . . . a claw.”

“A claw?” Bertolt looked confused.

“As part of her dress?” Virginia asked.

“No, I mean, she had a big black claw, like Baxter’s. It was where a foot should be. I mean, she was standing on it, like it was her leg. Like she had the legs of a beetle, but human-size.” Darkus heard himself saying the words and knew it sounded crazy.

“Are you sure?” Virginia asked.

“Yes, I’m sure.”

“Your mind could’ve been playing tricks on you, ’cause you were scared.”

“Maybe it was a boot,” Bertolt suggested. “A designer boot?”

Darkus shook his head. “I know what I saw.” He looked back at Towering Heights. “She’s a monster,” he said again.

Bertolt looked at Virginia. “What are we going to do?”

“Darkus, we have to move the beetles tonight,” Virginia said, “or they’ll all be dead in the morning.”

“I—I—” The sound of his dad calling out his name was ringing in Darkus’s ears. “I’ve got to get Dad out of there.”

“To move the beetles means moving the cups,” Bertolt said. “All their babies, their eggs and larvae, are inside. They won’t leave without them.” His face betrayed how impossible he thought the task was. “Even if we could move Beetle Mountain in one night, where would we put it?”

Darkus felt all the energy in his body drain away. His T-shirt was stuck to his back with sweat and blood. He felt weak and his hands were shaking.

“I don’t know what to do,” he admitted, covering his face with his hands.

Baxter dropped down, landing on Darkus’s fingertips, nuzzling the side of his horn against his forehead.

Bertolt patted his shoulder. “It’s okay. Things are better than they were this morning.”

“How?”

“Well, this morning you didn’t know where your dad was and we had no idea when the beetles would be attacked.”

“He’s right”—Virginia nodded—“now we know what we’re up against.”

Bertolt scowled at Virginia. “The main thing is that your dad is alive.” He mimed at Virginia to say something nice.

Virginia mimed back that she didn’t know what to say.

“We need a plan.” Darkus tapped his hands against his temples as he thought.

“Your uncle will know what to do about your dad. We should go and find him,” Virginia said. “But the beetles, it’s up to us. We’ve got to save them. We made an oath.”

Darkus looked down at Baxter, now on the palm of his hand.

“If Lucretia Cutter says they’re hers,” Bertolt said, thinking out loud, “then perhaps she bought them through a special insect dealer.”

“But then surely they’d have arrived dead, with pins in,” Virginia said. “The real question is, why does she want to keep them a secret?”

“Do you think she knows about their, um, special abilities?” Bertolt looked at Darkus.

Darkus nodded. “I think that’s why she wants them, and it’s their abilities she wants to keep a secret.”

“Because she’s not ready yet . . .” Virginia stroked her chin. “This may sound crazy, but if the beetles belong to her . . . is it possible she’s making beetles with superpowers? You said she had a room full of angry beetles in there, and a laboratory.”

“How on earth do you make a superbeetle?” Bertolt scoffed.

Darkus blinked down at Baxter, thinking about the statues of the man, the beetle, and the double helix that were in Lucretia Cutter’s white room. He remembered something Uncle Max had said. “She’s experimenting with DNA.”

“DNA?” Virginia frowned.

“It’s the genetic code that makes up every living creature,” Bertolt explained.

“I know what DNA is!” Virginia retorted.

“Uncle Max said that when Lucretia Cutter knew Dad, she was a geneticist.”

Bertolt held his hand out for Newton to land. He cupped his glowing body to make a lantern. “Do you think our beetles are clever enough to have escaped from her laboratory?”

“I don’t know.” Darkus shrugged. “Maybe. But why would Lucretia Cutter want to make superbeetles?”

Bertolt shook his head, unable to think of an answer.

“Who cares? She’s got your dad, and if he was trying to stop her from doing something, then anything we can do to put a wrench in the works has got to count for something, right?” Virginia reasoned. “Let’s fight her every step of the way.”

“That’s it!” Darkus looked up, his eyes bright with an idea.

“It is?” Bertolt smiled, hopefully.

“Tomorrow, when Lucretia Cutter is collecting her beetles”—he lifted his hand holding Baxter—“I’ll rescue Dad from Towering Heights . . .”

“You’re going to sacrifice the beetles?” Virginia looked shocked.

“No! Of course not!” Darkus got to his feet and straightened his shoulders. “We’re only just beginning to learn what the beetles can do.” He thought about the angry beetles in Towering Heights and held Baxter out in front of him. “I think we should convince the beetles in the mountain to stand their ground, to fight. What do you reckon, Baxter?”

The rhinoceros beetle bowed his horn, and Darkus felt a thrill of defiance in his chest.

“Good. And if I’m right, when Lucretia Cutter arrives, there’ll be a beetle army waiting for her—and that’s the last thing she’ll be expecting.” He placed Baxter on his shoulder. “We’ll show her that she can’t just take what she wants.”

Virginia cocked her head. “Okay, this is beginning to sound good.”

“I’m glad you think so, because you’re going to have to lead the beetle army.”

“Me?” Virginia looked delighted. “Bring it on!”

 

 

Back at Uncle Max’s, Darkus left Virginia and Bertolt in the street while he went upstairs to talk to his uncle. But he returned shaking his head. “That’s weird. There’s no one home . . . the radio’s on, and the kitchen window’s open, but there’s no one there.”

“Maybe he popped out to the shops?” Bertolt suggested.

“Let’s go to Base Camp,” Virginia said. “We’ve got planning to do, and we can use the telescope to see when your uncle gets back.”

Darkus nodded and, because the coast was clear and they knew Pickering and Humphrey were out, they went in through the Emporium shop door. As they were crossing the shop floor, Virginia suddenly stopped dead, and Bertolt and Darkus stumbled into her back.

“I’m a genius!” she said, her eyes wide with excitement. “I’ve just had a brilliant idea. Follow me.”

Moments later, they found themselves outside the bathroom, looking at the manhole cover Virginia had seen the first time she’d explored the shop.

“What if we moved the beetles below the city, to the sewers?” she said. “No one would ever know that they were there.”

“Let’s try to lift it.” Darkus bent down and grabbed one of the handles.

The three of them heaved the heavy circle of metal to one side. The faint breath of sewage wafted out of the yawning black hole, making Bertolt’s nose wrinkle.

Virginia pulled a key-ring flashlight from her pocket. “Look, there’s a ladder in the wall.” She put the flashlight between her teeth and stepped onto the embedded iron rungs. “I’m going down.”

Darkus dangled his legs down the hole until there was room for him on the ladder. The shaft of light from above showed him the shadowy outlines of a cavernous brick chamber. The air was damp with the unsavory tang of ammonia and slurry clay. A perpetual dripping sound accompanied his descent, and when he reached the ground, he saw shallow puddles everywhere.

“What do you think, Baxter?” Darkus asked as he stepped off the ladder.

Baxter flew off to take a look around.

Virginia was already exploring a man-size archway on the other side of the room. Darkus set out across the floor to join her.

“Wait for me!” Bertolt called anxiously from the top of the ladder. Newton rose out of his hair and lit up the rungs for him. “Thank you, Newton,” Bertolt said, steadying his shaking hands and smiling at the firefly.

Through the archway was a giant tunnel the height of five men, its brick walls covered in lichen and lime scale. Oozing along the middle of the floor was a pea-green stream. In the distance, Darkus could hear the thunderous rumble of falling water.

“This place is cool,” he said.

“It’s perfect,” Virginia said proudly. “I wonder if there’s a room like this below each shop.” She peered across the tunnel to a similar archway opposite.

“Baxter seems to like it.” Darkus pointed to the rhinoceros beetle, who’d left his perch on his shoulder and was climbing the tunnel wall.

“Beetles don’t mind a bit of sewage, do they?” Virginia shone the flashlight back into the chamber below the ladder. Bertolt was gingerly picking his way across the floor.

“Some beetles love sewage.” Darkus grinned, thinking of the dung beetles. “But there’s no sewage in the chamber, just puddles of water. It’s perfect. No one will know Beetle Mountain is here, except us.”

“It’s disgusting,” Bertolt complained as Newton flew in loops above his head, glowing happily. “It stinks!”

“So now all we have to do is figure out how we get Beetle Mountain down here,” Virginia said.

“Leave that to the beetles,” Darkus replied, thinking back to how Baxter had pushed his mug up against the wall of his tank. “They might be small, but they’re strong, and there are loads of them.”

“Anyone who’s seen Beetle Mountain will know it can’t just vanish,” Virginia pointed out. “How do we stop Humphrey and Pickering from going to look for it?”

“That’s a good point.” Darkus scratched his head. “Lucretia Cutter’s offering them a lot of money. They aren’t going to be happy when the beetles suddenly disappear.”

“Actually”—Bertolt coughed—“I may have a solution.” Virginia and Darkus looked at him. “The other day, I read that there are beetles that can turn furniture into sawdust . . .”

“Someone’s been doing their homework!” Virginia teased.

“. . . and can destroy giant trees or eat entire crops overnight,” Bertolt continued.

“So?” Darkus asked.

“Well, I was thinking we could employ those talents to make this building a bit, er, unsafe.” He blinked.

“How unsafe?” Darkus asked.

“Definitely too unsafe for Humphrey and Pickering to be able to live in it anymore.”

Virginia whistled. “Go on.”

“If a bit of Humphrey’s bedroom floor were to, er, cave in, say, then everyone would assume the mugs had gotten smashed to pieces and the beetles had scattered.”

Darkus laughed. “Well, that sounds like the beginning of a plan.”