Lucretia Cutter’s bedroom was a cavernous chamber with a floor of ebony parquet and a high ceiling of black Gothic arches. The arches were embellished with gold and reached up a whole story. Hanging from the ceiling were two chandeliers carved from obsidian lava rock. The walls were painted a matte black, and gold arches, echoing those in the ceiling, framed doorways, mirrors, and bookshelves. In the center of the room was a towering four-poster bed, turned from African Blackwood and hung with hand-spun gold lace drapes that glittered as they looped down, offering a glimpse of black silk sheets.

There was a knock at the door. Lucretia Cutter sat up in bed, put on her sunglasses, and pulled a dressing gown over her shoulders. “Come in,” she called.

Gerard entered, carrying a silver tray on the fingertips of his left hand. On the tray was a flat-based glass bowl containing a foul-smelling, glutinous brown liquid.

“Your breakfast, Madame,” he said, his nostrils curling at the smell.

“Put it on my dressing table,” Lucretia Cutter said. She spun around in the bed to get up. This morning she would finally get her hands on those beetles. Then she’d know for certain whether her experiments with human DNA had worked.

Bartholomew was a fool for meddling in her affairs, but when he saw what she’d done—what she was going to do—he’d realize hers was the only way for the human race to progress and survive.

Gerard set down the tray and stood back.

“Madame.” He cleared his throat. “May I speak with you about Mademoiselle Novak?”

“What is it, Gerard?”

“The girl is at an age where I feel she may benefit from schooling . . .” He paused. “She is becoming curious about the world and asking questions.”

Lucretia Cutter studied the butler. She was intrigued that he’d given the matter any thought. He must care about the girl.

“The Dotreskolen Academy for Girls in Copenhagen is thought to be very good,” he said.

She gave a curt nod. “See to it. And tell Ling Ling to bring the car round at seven thirty.”

“Yes, Madame.” Gerard bowed and left the room.

Lucretia Cutter got out of bed and sat down in front of her mirror. It irked her that Gerard called her Madame and Novak Mademoiselle. “Age is a relative concept,” she reminded her reflection as she pulled the breakfast tray in front of her, “and I am but newly made.”

She lifted her hands to her jawbone, placing her fingertips below each ear, and, opening her mouth impossibly wide, popped her jawbone loose from her skull with a sickening click, letting it hang in the hammock of skin that covered her chin. She lowered her head to the rim of the glass bowl, and a long pair of pink fleshy palps reached out hungrily, scooping the putrid brown vegetation into her mouth.

 

 

“Isn’t she the loveliest beetle you’ve ever seen, Baxter?” Novak said, peering down at the rainbow-colored insect crawling across her pale pink bedspread. Its wing cases seemed to flicker from hot pink to emerald green and back again. She reached out her hand, and the jewel beetle stepped up onto it, dropping a miniature scroll onto her palm.

“Is that a message? It’s tiny!”

Novak put the beetle down and carefully unraveled the roll of paper.

 

N. I need your help. I’m outside. Can you let me in the servants’ entrance when your mother leaves the house? Baxter will bring me back your answer. The jewel beetle is a friend for you. D.

 

“He could have put a kiss at the end,” Novak harrumphed, but she couldn’t keep the smile from her face. “Baxter, go and tell him I’m coming.”

The rhinoceros beetle bowed and flew out of the window, back down to Darkus and Uncle Max, who were parked a little way down the road.

Novak got up and pulled a black silk kimono over her pajamas, checking her hair in the mirror. The jewel beetle had also caught sight of herself in the mirror and was parading up and down the bed, admiring her own reflection.

Novak lifted the beetle and placed her on her dressing table. “Are you like Baxter? Can you understand what I’m saying?”

The jewel beetle flicked her antennae gracefully.

“I’m going to take that to mean yes.”

The jewel beetle crawled up the dressing-table mirror and clambered onto the postcard of Audrey Hepburn that Novak kept tucked in the corner.

“That’s Audrey Hepburn. Isn’t she beautiful? She was a movie star.”

The beetle opened her wing casings, stretching out her soft wings.

Novak giggled.

“Of course, you are much prettier.”

The beetle skipped into the air and gracefully looped in a circle, landing on the dressing table facing the mirror and preening her antennae with her mandibles.

“That’s what I shall call you.” Novak lightly stroked the beetle’s elytra. “Hepburn.”

Opening the drawer of her dressing table, she rummaged around until she found a gold cone with a clasp on its underside. “This is a dangerous place for beetles, especially one as lovely as you,” she said to her new friend, pulling a budding white rose from the vase beside her mirror and cutting the stem with nail scissors. “We need to make you a hiding place.” She prized open the flower and plucked out the tightly coiled petals at its center. The outer petals held their shape, enveloping over one another, hiding the rose’s hollow heart. Novak pushed the stem into the gold cone and pinned the rose to her dressing gown. “Voilà! A corsage hideaway. Do you think you can fit inside?”

Hepburn flew up, hanging off the bottom petals to open the rose, and crawled in.

“Peep your head out.”

Hepburn poked her shiny pink face through the petals.

“Oh! You do understand me! That’s wonderful, but you must stay hidden if we meet anyone.”

Hepburn disappeared back inside the flower.

Novak examined herself in the dressing-table mirror. The rose didn’t look out of place, and anyway the angry bruise on her face drew attention away from the flower.

The familiar sound of car tires on gravel drew her to the window. Ling Ling was opening a car door, and then Mater was there, in a black floor-length dress, wearing her trademark lab coat and sunglasses. She got into the back.

Novak watched, keeping away from the window so that she couldn’t be seen. “Let’s go and find out what Darkus wants,” she whispered to Hepburn.

 

 

Lucretia Cutter’s car rolled out through the gates of Towering Heights and drove past the empty Renault 4. A white transit van, driven by the two men dressed in black who’d been with her when she’d visited Humphrey and Pickering, followed behind.

Darkus and Uncle Max were crouching behind the Renault 4, and as soon as the vehicles had passed them, they scurried in through the open gates of Towering Heights and pressed themselves into the beech hedge, where their crack commando unit of beetles was waiting for them. The gates swung closed behind them.

“Look, there’s Baxter.” Darkus pointed.

The rhinoceros beetle flew down from Novak’s window, looking like a miniature helicopter, and landed on Darkus’s outstretched hand.

“Did you find Novak?” Darkus asked. “Did she get the message? Is she coming?”

The beetle bowed.

Darkus looked up at Uncle Max and took a deep breath. “Well, I’m ready if you are.”

“Grit and determination, lad, that’s all we need.”

Uncle Max winked at him, and Darkus immediately felt calmer.

He put Baxter on his shoulder and then stood with his feet wide and his arms outstretched. First, the big black Hercules beetles clambered up, not stopping until they were perching on top of his head, shoulders, and back, then the green tiger beetles and dung beetles scrambled on. The bombardiers and fire beetles followed, swarming up his legs, and then the blister beetles clung on to the arms of his green sweater.

“Your father is not going to believe his eyes.” Uncle Max shook his head and chuckled.

Darkus smiled. “Let’s go.”

Uncle Max strolled casually up to the front door of Towering Heights. Darkus shadowed him, his head, shoulders, and torso covered with beetles.

Leaning forward, Uncle Max rapped the big silver knocker, and Darkus darted away around the side of the house, running toward the servants’ entrance.

Gerard opened the door.

“Good morning, young man,” Uncle Max said jovially, wedging his foot in the door.

Darkus could hear Uncle Max shouting. The butler must have answered the front door.

He knocked softly at the servants’ entrance. It opened, and Novak was there, smiling shyly, until her mouth dropped open at the sight of Darkus’s coat of shimmering beetles.

“Hello,” Darkus said. “Can we come in?”

“What are you doing here? And what are you doing with all those beetles?”

“I need you to take me down to the wine cellar,” he said, looking about furtively. “To where the cells are.”

“What! Why?” Novak took a step back. “I can’t . . . I . . .”

Darkus could see she was frightened.

“I wouldn’t ask unless it was important.” He looked her straight in the eye. “Novak, my dad’s down there and I have to rescue him. If I could do it without involving you, I would.”

Novak’s eyes grew wide.

“Your dad? Are you sure?”

Darkus nodded. “I’ve come to rescue him.”

“But how . . . ?” Novak brushed her hair back from her face. “I mean . . .”

“I need you to help me,” Darkus said softly.

“Darkus, I . . .”

“Please, Novak.”

She touched her fingers to the purple bruise below her eye, and after a moment’s thought, she nodded.

“I brought a few beetle friends along to help us.”

Novak giggled. “I can see. You look ridiculous.”

“They’re surprisingly heavy.” He smiled. “You got my message from the jewel beetle?”

“Oh yes, Hepburn.” Novak tapped the rose pinned to her dressing gown. “She’s simply beautiful.”

Hepburn poked her head out and waved her antennae at Darkus.

“Hello,” he said to the beetle. “Glad to see you’ve made yourself at home.”

“Come on,” Novak said. “We’d better do it quickly. I don’t know how long Mater will be gone.”

Novak took Darkus through the empty kitchen and toward a spiral staircase that led downward. At the bottom was a door, and behind it a dark, fusty-smelling room.

“This is the wine cellar. On the other side is another door, which leads out to the cells,” she whispered.

“Are they guarded?” Darkus asked as they crept through the dark room, stacked high with dusty bottles.

“Dankish, Craven, and Mawling have a schedule. There’s an office at the end of the corridor with CCTV, but they never look at it. No one would dare break in here.”

“There were two men driving a white van behind your mother’s car.”

“That would be Dankish and Craven. Mawling’s not very clever. Mater never trusts him with anything important. But we don’t want to run into him anyway. He’s enormous, square like a house, and has a flat nose from when he was a heavyweight boxer.”

They reached the door and slipped through it. Darkus found himself standing in exactly the same spot he’d been in when the butler had grabbed him, except that this time the corridor was silent. He looked over his shoulder to the white door with the angry beetles behind it and hoped none were free or roaming the house. He could see the door that his dad’s voice had come from. It had the number nine on it.

“Right,” Darkus whispered to the beetles clinging to his sweater, “time to do your stuff.”

The beetles dropped, fluttered, and crawled to the floor, scurrying forward to the door marked with the number nine. Only Baxter remained on Darkus’s shoulder, his antennae held rigid and alert.

“How are you going to open the door without the key?” Novak whispered.

“Leave that to the beetles.” Darkus slid back the window in the cell door, but it was pitch-black inside. “Dad?” he called in a loud whisper.

There was no reply.

A line of bombardier beetles climbed up the door and filed through the keyhole. There was a gentle hissing sound as they sprayed their defensive acid into the lock and the metal dissolved. With a heavy clunk, the lock fell out of the door and tumbled to the floor, where it was caught silently by a platoon of dung beetles.

Darkus pushed the door open. He heard some strange sounds—tiny hisses, clicks, and squeals.

Taking a step inside, he waited for his eyes to adjust to the darkness. There were no windows and no electric light.

The fire beetles scurried in, their luminous spots glowing intensely like hundreds of pinpricks of light. They surrounded a dark figure stretched out on the floor.

“Dad?” Darkus whispered, approaching cautiously. “Is that you?”

The figure appeared to be asleep on his stomach.

“Dad?” Darkus dropped down and rolled his father onto his back, pulling his shoulders up onto his knees and cradling his head. “Daddy, it’s me. It’s Darkus.”

“No,” his father sobbed quietly, his voice like ash, “she got my boy.” His beard was bushy, and his hair wild and matted.

“No, Dad, she didn’t. I’m right here.”

“I prayed for it to be a dream.” His father’s voice was a whisper. “Just another of her tortures. All is lost.”

As his eyes adjusted, Darkus saw tiny black creatures on and around his father’s body. He brushed some away with the back of his hand. He couldn’t quite see what they were, but they looked like large ants. Before he could say anything the tiger beetles raced in as quick as lightning, grabbing the creatures with their sharp mandibles, slicing them in two, and throwing them into the shadows. When confronted by the beetles, the insects, whatever they were, retreated into the dark corners of the room. Darkus could feel them watching him and waiting.

“Dad, listen. We’re here to rescue you.”

His dad clutched his wrist. “Son, you must get out of here. Save yourself.”

“We’re not going anywhere without you, Dad.”

“Darkus, I’m chained to the wall.” He moved his feet and Darkus heard the clatter of shackles.

“Bombardiers, I need you,” Darkus called softly.

Bartholomew Cuttle looked around, confused.

“Who are you talking to?”

“You mustn’t worry, Dad, we’re going to get you out of here.”

“I don’t know where I am.”

“You’re in Towering Heights, Lucretia Cutter’s house,” Darkus said. “Do you remember how you got here?”

“I was in the vaults. He was gone. I should have known it wasn’t safe . . .” Bartholomew Cuttle shook his head. “I received a letter, a dead specimen; the beetle had been exhibiting strange behavior. I went to check, and . . . and . . .”

“What happened?”

“In the safe, instead of my Goliath, there was a mob of darkling beetles, all waiting . . . hind legs in the air. They blew gas at me, not benzoquinones . . . but I must have that wrong. Then the room was spinning, and specimen drawers were opening on their own, hundreds of Darwin’s beetles came teeming out . . . but that can’t be right, they’re an endangered species . . .”

Darkus thought back to the tanks just down the corridor and knew his father hadn’t been imagining the Darwin’s beetles.

“I must’ve been hallucinating, and then the ceiling, and then nothing. When I came to I was in this cell, and she was there.” He shuddered. “She was laughing at me. She’s a maniac, Darkus.” He looked up. “She wasn’t like that when I knew her fifteen years ago. She’s dangerous. She was saying terrible things about . . .” He shook his head. “You must get out of here. NOW!”

“Dad, listen to me. You were kidnapped by Lucretia Cutter’s beetles. She’s doing some kind of genetic engineering experiments on beetles. I don’t know what for, but the beetles that gassed you—they work for her.”

“Darkus, beetles can’t work for anyone. We tried that many years ago—all we managed to make were beetles with personality.”

“No, Dad, listen. I’ve seen her beetles, and they’re angry, like hungry wolves, and they did it. They kidnapped you. It’s been in all the newspapers. You never left the vault through the door—Eddie was outside the whole time. You just disappeared.”

“Disappeared? But . . .”

“Those Darwin’s beetles carried you away, down the air-conditioning shaft.”

“But that’s impossible . . . I would have . . .”

“That’s where Baxter found your glasses.”

“Baxter?”

“He’s a rhinoceros beetle. One of the good beetles that are helping me rescue you, right now. You must listen to me and do what I say. We don’t have much time.”