Darkus put his eye to the crack in the kitchen door.

Pickering was setting the table for supper.

“Tomorrow I’ll be rich!” Pickering said, hugging himself. He started humming and then burst into song: “Take a gold coin, spin it in the air, the next day, boom, you’re a millionaire . . .”

“Singing about me again?” Humphrey spun around, clutching a white plastic bag. Tucked under his opposite armpit was Bertolt’s box.

Darkus felt his pulse quicken. He silently ushered the beetles through the crack in the door. This needed to work or their whole plan would fall apart.

“Look what I found on the doorstep.” Humphrey ripped open the box and lifted out two bottles of champagne. “They’re from Lucretia Cutter.”

He slid a bottle to Pickering. Shaking his own, he popped the cork, tipped his head back, and poured a fountain of champagne in the direction of his face. “Man, I love that woman!”

Pickering carefully filled a yellow mug with the bubbling liquid. “A toast!” He raised his cup. “To Lucretia Cutter.”

Humphrey clanked his bottle against Pickering’s cup. “A mighty fine woman.”

He took the lids off the food containers as he pulled them out of the bag, then grabbed the bucket of cranberry sauce from the counter and sat down to eat. Snatching a duck dumpling, he dunked it in the cranberry sauce and stuffed it in his mouth.

Darkus could see Baxter was ready, in position, on the ceiling. Underneath the table was a unit of shiny, black, fat-tailed blister beetles and the scruffy diabolical ironclad beetles who looked like blobs of rust.

“Do you have to eat with your mouth open?” Pickering said, sitting down across from Humphrey.

Humphrey burped. “Oops, bubbles!”

“You’re a pig,” Pickering said with disgust. “Eating with your hands. Drinking from the bottle.”

“It’s Chinese takeout. That’s how you’re supposed to eat it,” Humphrey scoffed. “Anyway, my way means there’s less cleaning up.”

Pickering and Humphrey glared at each other.

Darkus gave the signal to the waiting emerald-green tiger beetles, huddling under the lip of the table. They immediately raced up onto the surface, dashing over Pickering and Humphrey’s food. They moved so fast Darkus couldn’t see them, but he definitely noticed when they slowed down, crawling toward the edge and then grinding to a halt. “Something’s wrong,” Darkus hissed to the four dung beetles waiting by his feet.

“Cleaning up? You never do any cleaning up,” Pickering snapped, spooning noodles into his mouth.

“That’s because I don’t make messes.”

“What!” Pickering went purple. “What is that revolting thing in your bedroom if it isn’t a ginormous mess of dirty dishes?”

Darkus saw that Baxter had dropped down from the ceiling and was hovering above the table. There was something wrong with the tiger beetles.

“How can you say you don’t make messes?” Pickering demanded, outraged.

“Because it’s the truth!” Humphrey said, eating two spring rolls at once.

Pickering angrily grabbed his mug and threw his champagne in Humphrey’s face, hitting the hovering rhinoceros beetle and flinging him onto Humphrey’s nose.

Shocked, Humphrey jerked backward, knocking Baxter into his noodles, his chair tottering and then crashing to the ground.

Pickering was on his feet, screeching with laughter.

“Look at you!” He cackled.

Humphrey flailed his arms and legs frantically trying to get up.

“You—you look like a—a giant beetle!” Pickering roared and slapped his knees with delight.

“Get in there and get them all out,” Darkus hissed. The dung beetles reared up and shook their legs in the air, then took off and zoomed into the kitchen. They landed on the table and quickly loaded the tiger beetles onto their backs. The blister beetles and diabolical ironclad beetles ran up the table legs to help Baxter.

Darkus held his breath as he watched. Baxter was tangled in the noodles and couldn’t get free.

Pickering turned back to his dinner. “Humphrey,” he said, scratching his head. “The table is covered in beetles. I think they are trying to eat our food . . .”

“What!?” Humphrey grabbed the tabletop and heaved himself onto his knees, his nose level with the table surface.

The blister beetles pulled Baxter from the tray of noodles. The rhinoceros beetle stumbled as he tried to fly. On the third attempt he was airborne.

Pickering grabbed a frying pan and, using it like a tennis racket, hit Baxter onto the floor.

“Blasted beetles!” Humphrey roared. “Take that!” He pounded the diabolical ironclad beetles with his sledgehammer of a fist. “Got them!” He lifted his hand and looked.

The diabolical ironclad beetles ran forward to form a defensive circle, back to back with the blister beetles.

Humphrey was surprised to see them move. “They should be dead. I gave them a good beating.”

“Bet they wouldn’t live if we put them through your grinder,” Pickering said, picking up Baxter by his horn.

Darkus was up on his feet, not knowing what to do. He couldn’t let them grind Baxter.

Humphrey clapped his hands gleefully and ran to the cupboard beside the sink, pulling out a silver-and-red meat-grinding machine with a crank handle.

Pickering dropped Baxter onto his palm and swept his hand under the table, collecting all the other beetles into it and bringing his other hand over the top to make a cage.

“Ouch!” Pickering’s fingers sprang open. The skin on his palm was beginning to blister. “Argh! It’s burning me!”

The beetles quickly scrambled onto the rhinoceros beetle’s thorax, and Baxter was up in the air, flying toward the door, with a diabolical ironclad beetle dangling from his horn.

“Argh!” Pickering ran to the sink, turned on the cold tap, and thrust his hand under the water. “It burns! It burns!”

“That’s why they’re called blister beetles,” Darkus whispered, pushing the door open a fraction for Baxter and the other beetles before silently creeping away.

 

 

Darkus crept back to Humphrey’s bedroom, carrying Baxter in his hands. His shoulders were littered with sleeping tiger beetles and exhausted dung beetles. A raggle-taggle posse of blister and diabolical ironclad beetles clung to the sleeves of his green sweater.

“Part one of the mission is complete,” he whispered, triumphantly. “Now we have to wait and see if Bertolt’s mum’s sleeping pills work.”

“They’ll work,” Bertolt said. “When they’re mixed with alcohol they’d knock out an elephant.”

“Help me push the armchair up against the door.” Darkus said, carefully delivering his cargo of beetles to the foot of the mountain.

“What happened to the tiger beetles?” Virginia asked as they pushed.

“I think the sleeping powder must have gotten into their spiracles and knocked them out,” Darkus replied. “They dropped it over the food just fine, but then it was as if they wound down like clockwork. The dung beetles had to fly them out. I think Baxter might have been affected, too—he got knocked into a plate of food and now he’s acting woozy.”

At Baxter’s call, every beetle in the building gathered on Beetle Mountain; the surface seethed and shimmered with brightly colored insects. Darkus tried to take them all in, but there were so many different species, shapes, and colors of beetle that his mind couldn’t hold on to them: dung beetles, jewel beetles, giraffe-necked weevils, Goliaths, stags, bombardiers, fireflies, lavender beetles, ladybugs, Atlases, Hercules and titan beetles, tiger beetles, rhinoceros beetles, carpet beetles, deathwatches, and tok-tokkies hammering their heads and abdomens against the cups for all they were worth. His breath caught in his throat as he recognized the true power of these beetles. Suddenly he understood why his dad thought beetles could save the planet. But right now they needed him to save them, and he wasn’t about to let them down.

Uncle Max was sitting outside in the sycamore tree, with a branch wedged under his armpits, staring wide-eyed and openmouthed through the window.

“Are you okay?” Darkus waved at his uncle.

Uncle Max saluted a speechless reply.

The beetles fell silent as Darkus came to stand in front of them, between Virginia and Bertolt. A million compound eyes looked at him, waiting for him to speak.

“Lucretia Cutter is coming,” he said.

The beetles hissed.

“And we cannot stop her.” He paused. “But we can fight her!”

The beetles stamped their feet.

“And we WILL fight her.” He took a deep breath. “Your enemy is my enemy. Lucretia Cutter has kidnapped my father and is holding him prisoner in her house. Tomorrow, when she’s here, I’m going to rescue him.”

The room hummed and clicked.

“But,” he raised his voice over the noise, “I can only do it with your help.”

There was silence, and Baxter lifted into the air, waggling his front legs and beating his soft wings in a rhythmic pattern.

“Will you help me? I need a small tactical division of beetles to get me into Towering Heights and get Dad out.”

A soft drumming of horns, jaws, and legs on porcelain answered him, and a troop of bombardier beetles scurried forward. They’d be useful, Darkus knew, because of the acid they fired from their abdomens. They were joined by speedy and vicious tiger beetles, dung beetles, fire beetles (good for illumination), and a battalion of Hercules and titan beetles, all known for their strength.

Darkus knelt down.

“Thank you, my friends.” He turned and pointed. “That’s my uncle Max outside, in the tree.” Uncle Max waved. “Follow him down to the car.”

“This way,” Uncle Max called as he climbed clumsily down the tree.

Darkus stood up, watching the beetles troop out through the window, and then turned back to the mountain. “Lucretia Cutter has a daughter called Novak,” he said, “and she’s on our side.” He remembered Novak stretched out on the floor, unconscious. “She needs a friend, and we need a spy in that house, to find out what Lucretia Cutter is doing. Is there a beetle brave enough to volunteer?”

“She’s getting a beetle?!” Virginia said jealously.

A group on the side of the mountain parted, and a jewel beetle, the size of a golf ball and shaped like a coffee bean, flew up to Darkus’s outstretched hand. She had a neat pinlike head with delicate antennae, a perfectly rounded thorax, and iridescent rainbow-colored elytra.

“Oh my goodness, she’s so pretty!” Bertolt marveled. “Novak’s going to love her.”

The beetle seemed to like the attention and flickered her elytra open, showing off the bright colors of her wing cases.

Virginia glared at the beetle. “Great!” she muttered. “Now everyone has a beetle except for me!”

Darkus pulled Virginia forward to stand beside him. “I won’t be here when Lucretia Cutter comes, but Virginia will be by your side as you fight. She will be able to understand what the humans are doing and help command your troops. Listen to her.”

Virginia smiled and waved awkwardly.

“Tonight we move Beetle Mountain downstairs to your new home, in the sewer, and make it impossible for Lucretia Cutter to follow you.”

“I’m helping with that,” Bertolt blurted out proudly, and an excited Newton rose up out of his hair, glowing brightly.

“Together,” Darkus said, “we’ll show Lucretia Cutter that our lives are not hers to control.”

A high humming sound rose from the mountain, filling the air like a sustained note from a violin. A second harmonizing note joined the first, and then a third as a swarm of tiny green-and-yellow iridescent beetles hovered above the mountain surface, their wings vibrating in unison. Battalion after battalion of black stag beetles marched over the peak of the mountain, coming to a halt and beating their jaws on the crockery surface. The drumming was melodic, like a miniature steel band. The humming and drumming became insistent, crescendoing as the beetles fell into military formations. The weird and wonderful music grew louder and more frenzied as the beetles marched and the mountain reverberated with the rhythm of war.

Darkus surveyed the ranks of beetle soldiers stretched out before him, and hoped that Lucretia Cutter was not prepared for what she was about to face. Surprise was the best weapon they had. “In this battle,” he said, “victory is survival.” He raised his fist. “And we will be victorious.”

The room erupted. Beetles flew into the air, looping in and out of dancing swarms, light ricocheting off their outstretched elytra and radiating from their iridescent markings.

Darkus smiled at Virginia and Bertolt. It felt amazing to be finally fighting back. There was a fire in his belly, and grit in his soul, and he wasn’t the least bit frightened. Tonight he was going to get Dad back.