Calista Bloom, who was sticking close to Uncle Max for safety, tripped, crying out as she fell to the floor in front of Lucretia Cutter’s meathead.
“Mum!” Bertolt howled, jumping onto the spotlight stand and yanking it around to point at Mawling, who was instantly blinded and then attacked by a swarm of beetles who had been drawn to the light.
Calista Bloom scrambled to her feet, skidded on her stiletto heels, and fell backward, doing an accidental bicycle kick right into Mawling’s privates.
Mawling hovered for a moment, pulling a face that looked like he’d sucked a lemon, his hands clasping his crown jewels. Uncle Max spun around and punched him. Mawling crumbled to the floor.
Ling Ling’s arm swung back, and Darkus thought she was about to strike him, but instead she was defending herself from a microphone stand that was swinging down toward her head. She blocked the blow, grabbed the stand, and spun around. Novak was clutching the other end of it.
Ling Ling pivoted, wrapping her free arm around the shaft of the stand and lifting Novak into the air. Novak let go, launching herself backward, flipping into a reel of cartwheels and a roundoff, landing in an attack stance.
Darkus was stunned. Before he could cheer, Novak was running forward, launching herself into a spinning pirouette of roundhouse kicks, spotting as she spun, never taking her eyes off Ling Ling.
Ling Ling pushed Darkus aside as Novak’s foot swiped across her cheek, splitting her already blistered skin and spraying blood across the floor.
Darkus stared at Novak’s feet. They were claws. Black chitinous claws like her mother’s.
Ling Ling rallied, coming hard at Novak, who blocked her punches and kicks but was no match for the deadly chauffeur. Novak flipped backward. Stumbling, she fell to her knees, and suddenly Ling Ling was standing over her, her face all bloody and blistered.
Darkus scrambled forward and grabbed the discarded microphone stand, sweeping it at Ling Ling’s supporting leg, knocking her off balance. “RUN!” he shouted at Novak.
He jumped up onto a theatre seat, where he could see that Virginia and Bertolt were each standing behind one of the enormous chrome spotlights at the back of the theatre, trying to control their movement. He pointed up into the heart of the beetle vortex above people’s heads. “SHINE THE LIGHT THERE!” he shouted. “UP THERE!”
Virginia saw him, followed his finger, and nodded, moving the bright light so it pointed into the throng of beetles. She shouted to Bertolt to do the same, and the beams met, creating a concentrated ball of light.
The beetles, unable to help themselves, were drawn to the light. They pulled away from combat with the humans and, hypnotized, flew into, through, and around the light.
Darkus, listen, please.”
Darkus turned at the sound of Novak’s voice and jumped down from the theatre seat.
“You have to help me,” Novak blurted out, grabbing his hand. “Mater’s going to put me back in the pupator.”
“What’s a pupator?”
“It hurts, and I’m frightened.” Novak was biting her lip so hard he could see blood. “She’s going to turn me into a beetle, like her.”
“No, Novak, I won’t let her.” Darkus shook his head.
“Thank you.” Novak flung her arms around him. “I knew you’d understand. Thank you, thank you.”
“Ow! Let go!” Darkus laughed, pulling away.
“You must stay away from Ling Ling.” Novak’s eyes were wide with concern. “She kills people, and she doesn’t have to try very hard to do it.”
Darkus’s eyes flickered to a gang of gym-loving actors and stunt men who had encircled the chauffeur. Ling Ling stood in the middle of them, calm and poised to fight.
“Did Hepburn find you?” Novak asked. “Is she okay?”
“Hepburn was amazing.” He popped open a pouch on his belt. “Her Morse code is perfect.”
“Oh, darling Heppy, there you are,” Novak cooed as she lifted the pretty jewel beetle and hugged her.
Darkus looked up. “Hey, why are the spotlights not up in the air?”
He heard cries of alarm behind him. The beetles were attacking again, and more savagely this time. The white beetles’ claws sliced and cut faces and necks.
He looked at the stage. Lucretia Cutter was proudly surveying the carnage in the auditorium, and standing beside her was his father.
Darkus was about to shout, but Novak grabbed his arm. “No,” she said. “Darkus, he’s on her side.”
Darkus’s guts twisted. He shook his head. “He can’t be.”
“He knows about the pupator. He’s going to let her change me.”
“No.” Darkus looked at Novak. “He isn’t like that.”
“Darkus, I heard them talking.”
“I won’t believe it.” He broke away from her. “Where are the security guards?” He looked about angrily. “There are loads of them outside.”
“Ling Ling took out everyone inside the building and locked the doors. Maybe the men outside don’t know there’s anything happening in here.”
“Don’t they watch TV?” Darkus snapped. “We need to get them inside. Now.”
“How?”
Darkus pointed at a glass box on the wall. “Fire alarm.”
Between them and the button, Ling Ling was kicking the stuffing out of ten men.
“Baxter!” Darkus called, and the rhinoceros beetle, who’d been on top of the camera, fighting beetles, flew to his hand. “Can you break the glass with your horn and push that button?”
Baxter didn’t wait to reply, but spun around, flying up and over the heads of the fighting humans.
“We’re losing,” Darkus said, looking around in horror. “We need those security men now.”
“I’ll get them in,” Novak said, leaping up.
“Novak, your feet!” Darkus looked down at the hooks on the end of her claws. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Do you hate them?” she asked. “They’re ugly, aren’t they?”
“Are you kidding?” Darkus looked at her. “They’re AWESOME! Can you run up walls and stuff? Like a beetle?”
“I don’t know.” Novak frowned. “I’ve never tried.”
“What!?” Darkus exclaimed. “If I had beetle feet, that’s the first thing I’d do.”
Novak looked down at her black feet, pivoted, and ran, her strong claws powering her forward. As she approached the wall she raised one foot and then the other, the sharp serrated edges of her claws cutting into the brick as she ran up to the ceiling and then around the corner to the stage door.
An ear-splitting alarm rang out. Baxter had done it!
Jumping back up onto the chair, Darkus saw that Uncle Max had Dankish up against the wall, his hand around the villain’s neck, while Calista Bloom scolded him, but they were both being attacked by beetles now. Darkus scanned the room, but couldn’t see Virginia or Bertolt anywhere.
Grabbing up his backpack, he strapped it back on. This fight was far from over. He turned to the stage, a tumult of suspicion, anger, and love churning in his belly as he saw his father in heated conversation with Lucretia Cutter. He wasn’t arguing, or fighting her, like he should have been doing. He seemed to be pleading with her.
Darkus glared at Lucretia Cutter, wondering how you hurt someone who was bulletproof.
The greatest weapon you have is knowledge. Dr. Yuki Ishikawa’s voice sounded in his head. Think, Darkus. You know what she is. Every creature has a predator. That is how balance is maintained.
Darkus looked past the screen, hanging precariously from one wire, to the golden pyramid of cages full of exotic birds, fluttering around and flapping their wings. “Of course!” he gasped, launching himself up the steps on the left side of the stage and running behind Lucretia Cutter.
“It’s dinnertime, my feathered friends,” he cried out, flinging open the cages and shooing the birds out into the theatre. They rocketed up into the seething torrent of beetles, happily pecking at and swallowing as many as
they could. Seven of the bigger birds peeled away from the flock, flying to the front of the stage, where the biggest beetle they’d ever seen was hovering in the air.
Lucretia Cutter shrieked and fell to the ground as the birds pecked at her wings and eyes.
“Baxter!” Darkus gasped. In his haste to fight back, he’d endangered his best friend. He spun around, studying the wall beside the fire alarm. There was no sign of him. Darkus couldn’t breathe. He felt something knock against his ankle, and looked down: The rhinoceros beetle was head-butting him. He swept the beetle up, kissing his thorax, before placing Baxter on his shoulder. “Stay close, Baxter, I don’t want those birds to get you.”
Darkus’s giant pooter was empty and, he realized, the safest place for the Base Camp beetles. Inside they’d be protected from the hungry birds. He jumped off the edge of the stage, scurrying to the electrical box, which was a mess of copper wires thanks to the titan beetles.
“Quick, guys, I need to suck you up into the pooter, before those birds try to eat you!” He switched on the suction and vacuumed up the titan beetles. “This room is full of birds,” he whispered to the hidden battalion of Base Camp beetles in his utility belt. “Don’t come out unless I call you.”
The Base Camp beetles chittered in reply.
A team of security men burst through the double doors at the back of the theatre, led by Motty. They headed straight for Ling Ling and the ring of fallen actors groaning on the floor. Darkus saw Virginia and Bertolt in the aisle, back to back, vacuuming up Lucretia Cutter’s beetles. The tide of the battle was turning. Most of Lucretia Cutter’s beetles were in the stomachs of the happy birds, or in Bertolt’s and Virginia’s pooters.
“Get away from me!” Lucretia Cutter screeched, punching a bird.
Ling Ling was in front of the stage, fighting off the security guards, disarming them as quickly as they drew their weapons. Dankish, wounded and limping, clambered onto the stage, where he met the injured Mawling. Novak rushed onto one side of the stage with the security guards who’d been stationed outside the stage door.
“NO!” Lucretia Cutter swung her head angrily. She was surrounded, and being pecked at by birds. “You cannot stop me.” She looked out into the theatre. “IT’S TOO LATE!” She wrapped a beetle leg around Darkus’s dad’s waist and rose up, lifting Bartholomew Cuttle into the air. “You’re fools!” Her human forearms slapped away the last attacking birds. “You can’t win. I already have the planet in the palm of my hand!”
“Dad!” Before he had time to think, Darkus was running: through a door, up a flight of stairs, bursting out onto the balcony, into a box overlooking the stage.
As Lucretia Cutter rose, with his dad clasped to her abdomen, Darkus jumped up onto the railing and threw himself off, grabbing her around the neck. The shock of his attack made Lucretia Cutter release Bartholomew Cuttle, who dropped to the stage floor with a sickening thud.
“I’m going to kill you, boy!” she shrieked, whirling around and grabbing him with two arms and two serrated beetle legs, rising higher into the fly tower of the theatre. There were bars with lights and ropes hanging down, attached to pieces of scenery. On a platform high above him, Darkus saw Gerard. He tried to cling to her neck, but Lucretia Cutter pulled him off and brought him around to face her.
“Ever been bitten by a beetle?” she said, stretching her black mouthparts wide, her mandibles reaching out toward him. His face was inches from her razor-sharp teeth, and her breath stank of rotten pear drops.
“BEETLES!” Darkus cried out, kicking his feet violently against Lucretia Cutter’s abdomen. Pushing himself backward into the air, he flung his arms over his shoulders as if doing a backward dive into a swimming pool, giving him enough momentum to escape her grasp.
He should have fallen like a dead weight to the ground, but the Base Camp beetles were there with him, exploding out of his backpack and utility belt, zooming out of their pockets, gathering underneath him, flying up as hard as they could. Baxter was in between his shoulder blades, Novak sent up Hepburn, Bertolt sent Newton, and Virginia hurled Marvin into the air. The titan beetles inside the pooter flew upward for all they were worth, pushing against the roof, slowing Darkus’s fall and lowering him slowly, and safely, to the ground.
“ENOUGH!” Lucretia Cutter lost her temper, zooming down and shouting orders at her injured henchmen. Dankish and Mawling disappeared into the wings, and Ling Ling ran to the red curtains on the stage. Vaulting up and grasping the drapes between her ankles, she folded the fabric into handholds and climbed to the top, then flipped herself upside down, hooked her feet around a lighting bar, and clambered up into the fly tower.
As Darkus landed, Novak ran toward him, smiling, her arms wide.
“You did it! You won!” she exclaimed as a giant black chitinous leg grabbed her from behind, dragging her backward and up into the air.
Darkus saw the shocked look on Novak’s face, and then she screamed, a sound of pure terror as Lucretia Cutter soared upward carrying her daughter.
“No!” He ran forward, but he was too late.
Baxter rocketed up after Novak, the rhinoceros beetle valiantly trying to attack Lucretia Cutter with his horn.
She smashed Baxter out of the air with a claw, and the big black beetle tumbled to the ground at alarming speed.
“BAXTER!” Darkus cried out.
Lucretia Cutter laughed, flying up into the fly tower, and was gone.
Darkus lurched forward. Baxter’s wings weren’t opening. He was going to hit the ground. Darkus couldn’t reach him in time. He sobbed as he threw himself toward his best friend, knowing it was too late.
And suddenly Dad was there, his arms outstretched, catching the rhinoceros beetle and drawing him into his chest, tumbling to the floor with a grunt of pain.
Darkus stumbled to his father.
“Dad? Baxter?” He fell to his knees at his father’s side, wiping away tears. “Are you okay?”
Bartholomew Cuttle carefully opened his hands. Sitting on his palm was a stunned but living rhinoceros beetle. Baxter lifted his foreleg and waved at Darkus, weakly, to show he was alive.
“Oh, Baxter! You crazy, brave beetle! I thought I’d lost you.” He grabbed the beetle up to his chest, curling his shoulders forward around his cupped hands. “Don’t ever do that to me again.”
Baxter opened his mouth and smiled up at Darkus.
“Dad, you saved him. You saved Baxter.” Darkus beamed at his father. “I knew you were on our side.”
“Listen to me, Darkus.” Bartholomew Cuttle was getting to his feet. “I have to go with her. I have to go with Lucretia Cutter.”
“What? But—but I saved you.”
“Yes. And you were amazing. But you’ve seen what she’s going to do. What she’s already doing. It’s much bigger than this awards ceremony. She won’t stop until the world is under her control.” Bartholomew Cuttle took his son’s hand. “I have to go with her. It’s my only chance to stop her, and I have a plan.” He paused. “But she’ll only trust me if she thinks I’ve abandoned you. If she thinks I’ve chosen her over you.” He gripped Darkus’s hand and looked him in the eyes. “Can you understand? I know it’s a lot to ask.”
Darkus nodded, and his father put a piece of paper into his pocket. “She has a secret laboratory—it’s called the Biome.”
“Hidden in the Amazon,” Darkus said.
“Yes!” His father looked surprised. “And you were right about Spencer Crips. She has him there. Tell his mother he’s alive, being made to work for Lucretia Cutter. These”—he pointed at Darkus’s pocket—“are the coordinates. I got them from the butler—he’s on our side. You need to tell the world what’s going on. Go to the entomologists, they’ll help you.”
Darkus got to his feet. “Dad, you’ve got to protect Novak. Don’t let Lucretia Cutter put her back in the pupator. She’s frightened, and she’s my friend.”
“I will. I promise.” Bartholomew Cuttle nodded. He put his hands on D
arkus’s shoulders. “That night we argued, I should have listened to you—about the beetles, about everything. I’m sorry. They’re amazing. You are amazing.” He hugged Darkus and Baxter tightly. “I’m going to need you to be brave for a little longer, and if you can bear it, come and save me one last time.” He let go. “And then we’ll be together again, and nothing will separate us. I promise.”
“I’ll rescue you as many times as you need me to,” Darkus said, his eyes filling with tears. “Me and Baxter will.”
“I love you, son,” Bartholomew Cuttle said over his shoulder as he turned, hobbling across the stage, following Dankish and Mawling up a ladder into the fly tower.
Humphrey and Pickering stood on the flat roof of the apartment block adjacent to the Hollywood Theatre. They’d found a fire escape that took them up onto the roof.
“If we can’t get into the theatre on the ground floor,” Humphrey said, looking at the gap between the two buildings, “then we’ll get in from the top.”
Ten feet of space marked the separation between the two buildings, and a drop of fourteen stories.
“Look!” Pickering tugged at Humphrey’s sleeve. “Lucretia Cutter’s helicopter!”
On the theatre rooftop was a helipad and a black helicopter with a gold scarab emblazoned on the side. Sitting in the pilot’s seat was the French butler.
“I see it,” Humphrey grunted. “I also see the massive gap between us and that rooftop.”
“It’s not so big.” Pickering couldn’t take his eyes off the helicopter, and kept licking his lips.
Humphrey pointed at a thick chain strung along the edge of the helipad. “If you could get that chain, tie it around that air-conditioning vent, and throw it back to me, I could swing over and climb up. It looks strong enough to hold my weight.”
Pickering’s brow creased. “But how will I get over there?”
“I’ll throw you,” Humphrey said.
Pickering’s mouth fell open. “You’ll what?”
Revenge of the Beetle Queen Page 20
