Prior noticed, however, that the cheery cherry demon stayed well clear of the burning candle. Maybe the thing really was made of wood, and would go up in smoke—literally—if ignited.
Prior reached for the candle. But the demon, no fool, was too quick for him. It caught his foot, twisted it, and threw him down prone with the step-over toe hold. "Hey!" Prior screamed inanely.
"Sorry—business before pleasure," the demon grunted regretfully. "Much as I'd like to play with you longer—chew your balls, bite your dong, squeeze the shit out of both ends of you, and all that innocent fun—I have to inflate you first."
Prior opened his mouth to scream for help, but saw that Black and Klo were staying well clear of the pentagram. They wouldn't come in after him. This wasn't betrayal so much as common sense. It was his own fight, brought about by his own stupidity in blithely entering the forbidden diagram.
The demon positioned itself, its heavy limbs holding down Prior's own. It leaned forward and banged woody fists into Prior's thighs. "Get them open, flabhole—I can't see your cherry." And the trunklike penis rammed into a tender buttock. Prior felt as though he were being impaled on a dull stake.
In fact, he finally had the message. He was about to get raped.
"You see, only the unfucked can hope to attain the Spire," the demon said conversationally as it zeroed in for another shot. "That's the way it is. So we five branches eliminate threats by fucking everything that approaches. Beautifully simple, is it not?"
The demon shifted about in order to gain better penile leverage—and in so doing released the submission hold on Prior's leg. This happened just as Prior realized the truth about cherries. This coincidental (?) juxtaposition galvanized him; he jumped and scrambled so suddenly that the demon was caught offguard.
Prior somersaulted out of the pentagram where the demon could not follow. "Gee, it was a virgin hole, too," the creature lamented. "Unsoiled by anything other than shit, water, a few fingers—and an Eeg egg." It nursed its disappointed phallus. "An only slightly tarnished cherry."
"Good for you, white turdling!" Black exclaimed. "You won through on your own. Now I can banish the branch and—"
"Leave it there!" Prior gasped, suddenly determined. The notion of getting mutilated or killed had been bad enough, but the threat against his assiduously-defended rectum had made him really angry. He dived for his supply pack.
"What are you doing?" Klo cried apprehensively. "Don't you know when to quit? That thing might break out and screw us all!"
Literally, Prior now knew. But this didn't change his mind. He plunged a hand in and brought out the twelve-incher. He clapped Monster to his socket and waited while it burgeoned. "I came to climb the Cherry Tree, and this branch sure needs some climbing."
"Man!" Black said admiringly as the pigskin towered turgidly, vaguely resembling a football in its full formation.
Prior marched toward the pentagram, phallus clearing the way like a snowplow. "Now I'm armed, you manfucking woodpecker! Come and get it!"
The demon seemed daunted, for Prior's fighting member was longer by three inches and leather-tough. But the spell and diagram kept the supernatural creature there, and this was its fucking business.
Prior stepped into the combat zone again, leading with that massive genital bludgeon. The demon's nerve broke; it was outgunned. It tried to run, but bounced off the invisible shield outlined by the pentagram and fell, its front scorched. Prior strode forward and caught it from behind, reaching a hand down and under to grasp the hanging testicles and yank the entire loin back. With his free hand he hauled one of the large gray arms around, tweaking those demonic balls when he encountered resistance. Soon he had the demon's hands and feet together, and tied them in one bundle with the remains of his torn trousers: wrists and ankles crossed under the clumsy knot.
Now the demon got over its momentary shock and struggled earnestly, but that delay had been fatal for it. Prior wrestled the folded posterior into an upright posture and applied the pulsing tip of Monster to the demon's anus. The sphincter resisted, so Prior stepped back and kicked it with his snowboot, leaving a smear of caked vanilla across the hole. The muscle loosened only enough to fire a gaseous stench at him, then sealed as tightly as before. The demon flesh was tough!
"So it's like that, is it?" Prior muttered as he choked on the fumes. He picked up the candle and applied the flame to the aperture. "Fart again, why don't you!"
The demon did, not realizing what was waiting. A blow-torch developed as the gas hit the fire, and Prior had to reel back before he got singed. But first he jammed the blazing candle-wick into the open rectum.
The demon howled. Its body distended, blimplike. Flame shot out of its ears. Then the candle blasted out of its ass and accelerated like a rocket toward the ceiling, leaving a trail of thick smoke.
Prior launched himself at the rectum again, and drilled in with Monster before the sphincter could recover. It was like a furnace inside the demon, but he gritted his teeth and rammed in every inch before he began bouncing.
"Fee foo fii fanch!" he chanted in time to the beats. "I smell the sap of a cherry branch!"
"Mercy, you fucking bastard!" the demon cried as the odor of burning cherry-wood rose from it.
Prior might have let up then, but something about the phrasing of this appeal annoyed him. "Be ye green or be ye brass, I'll grind your wood to wipe my ass!"
As he finished the chant, he came, putting out the fire with living fluid.
The demon emitted a terrible scream as the first jet of semen struck. Then it dissolved in greasy reddish vapor. Prior was left spurting into air.
"You did it!" Black cried. "You beat the branch! You roasted its cherry!"
"Yeah," Prior said, contemplating the spatter on the floor. He knew that his victory had been largely luck—that and a brief combat rage that now was gone. He had never reacted that savagely before. Of course no one had ever tried to sodomize him against his will before, either.
Black was right: the Cherry Tree was dangerous! He wouldn't care to try battling another demon like that. His quest for his natural penis wasn't worth such macabre risk of life and limb, not to mention virgin anus. They would have to go back down the mountain.
"I thought you didn't know the score," Black said as he erased the pentagram. "But that's the finest fuck I ever saw. By a white cock, I mean. You screwed that cherry right out of existence! Man, I sure wouldn't stand in your way now! Let's go on up and smear the whole spook-ridden Cherry Tree with baby-juice!"
"Amen," Klo said. "I thought you were a eunuch, but now I know you were just biding your time for a real challenge I want to watch it all."
And what could Prior say?
Chapter Twenty-Four
The ascent to Stage Four was the roughest yet. It was not a far piece, but it was steep and treacherous. Prior had found new clothing at Stage Three, but it did not fit him well, and chafed in sundry new places. They used the pitons and ropes to scale a crystalline cliff, then had to lay low in the colored snow for two hours while a black walnut-flavored storm whistled over. The ice cream dumped on their heads was bad enough, but the pelting fragments of nut were like shrapnel, threatening to gouge out the skin of face and hands wherever it was exposed. In addition, their leaking body warmth sank them down into an underlayer of mixed sludge that became jelly-like around them. Prior would gladly have abolished all ice cream from the universe for all time!