If he had had time to think it through properly, he would have known he had no chance, and let the Negro's corpse buy him time to escape. He would have given up his insanely foolish quest for the Spire. He would have returned to Earth a sadder but more potent man.
But now rage drove out all fear and all reason. His six-incher was not even rigid, but he tensed his legs to pounce on the crocodile.
His foot slipped on the severed, peeled-banana penis. A testicle squirted out from under as Prior fought for balance. He couldn't stop; he had to fall, so he fell forward.
And landed astride a tigress. Literally.
"Another lover, so soon!" she purred, her predator-muscles orienting on him. "Well here's some real pussy for you, half-mast!"
She twisted off Black and faced Prior, the deadly sharp claws of all four feet driving for his gut. But he still had some of the advantage of surprise; she was not properly braced for his impact, and the floor was slippery with diluted blood on the ice. He crashed into her bodily and shoved her sidewise, away from Black.
Instinctively he wrapped his arms about her torso, pulling her tight to restrict those scraping claws. And then she was an enormous fat hen. "Squa-awk!" she squawked. "Let's have some cock!"
He tried to wring her small neck, but the clumsy bird became an unclumsy bird: a giant eagle, its bill stabbing down at his eyeballs.
There was hardly time to react, let alone think. Prior butted his head against hers, using his hard skull to blunt her sharp beak, and reached out wildly for Black's body. There was sharp pain in his skull as hair and skin were gouged, but he found the body. While he fought off the buffeting eagle's wings one-handed he wrestled with the Negro's body for that magic amulet. It was set in a bracelet, and if he could get it off—well, he could take the punishment of claw and beak for a little while, so long as he got hold of that protection.
Meanwhile his opponent had changed her shape again. A man-sized hairy spider threw loops of sticky web about him while purple mandibles came at his face. But he got hold of Black's arm, slid along the wrist, hooked a finger under the band. As the spider's venom-dripping jaws opened to damp on his nose, he hauled desperately on amulet and hand, and brought it between him and the demoness. The spark jumped again.
"Now cut that out!" the spider said, jerking back while its face-fur smoked. Its six or ten eyes blinked in pain. "I'm just trying to offer you a little good hair-pie." But already she was a shark, with seemingly endless teeth.
"There's something fishy about you," Prior grated. He put the amulet right into that underslung maw and drove it back. He had a weapon now—but he knew it could not win the battle for him by itself. It had not been enough for poor Black! He used it to fend her off while he concentrated desperately on his definitive weapon: his penis. He could only vanquish her completely by copulating with her—and it had to be fast, or he was dead, amulet or no.
But it was hard to stiffen his torpid member in the face of these repeated changes of form! Now the bitch was a bear, now a snake, now a pig. Each form constituted a new attack by claw, fang or snout, and none was sexually conducive. And he sorely missed the semen he had so recently expended on the assless demon. An amulet was no substitute for ejaculate!
Nevertheless the heat of combat elevated his blood pressure, and his member gradually came erect. The abrasion it received during the struggle helped, though there was little sexual appeal in this. As his penis hardened, the demoness lost strength, for here was the thrusting phallus she most feared. Her scratches became shallow, and her blows futile. Finally she collapsed back into human form.
Prior wedged her luscious thighs apart and forced his full-sized meat into her loosening hole. At least this vagina was ample! He had been half afraid she wouldn't have one. She screamed and went limp.
He had won again!
Except—
Except that he hadn't come yet. And she hadn't puffed into smoke. That was suspicious.
She was playing possum, though she had carefully avoided assuming the possum shape, evidently hoping he'd be satisfied with the seeming victory. She must have known that he couldn't come quickly, so her loose vulva was safe for the time being. If he fell for that ruse, who could guess what deviltry she would come up with once she recovered the initiative?
Prior rammed into her the full six inches, finding no resistance. It was such a contrast to the vicelike tightness of the other female; this one was a cool ocean in her laxity. In fact, he had precious little to strive against, and his penis was freezing!
That was her trap! She was zero weather inside, and his hot blood was rapidly chilling. He had to finish the job promptly, or his flesh would go numb.
He couldn't come. He had to have incentive, stimulation, and friction, and there was no more of these here than might be had by having intercourse with a day-old corpse. In fact she even felt corpselike now—a body in the freezer.
Black groaned and stirred. "Did you trim her wick, whiteshit?"
So he was alive! "I have it in, but the juice is congealing. Do you have any more advice?"
Black coughed unhealthily. "My old man—curse his black hide—always said...." He trailed off.
"What did he say?" Prior demanded. His whole front was getting chilled; he might as well have been having intercourse with a bank of snow! "Don't faint now, you bastard nigger!"
"Flattery... nowhere...."
"Listen, Black, I'm not flattering you! My cock is an icicle! Tell me what you know!"
"If you can't eat it, and you can't...." The voice became an indecipherable mumble.
"What? What?" Prior shouted desperately. Not only was his member going numb, it seemed to be frozen in place in her ice-solid body. To withdraw now might well be to rip it off himself!
"...can't fuck it...."
"I know I can't fuck it!" Prior cried. "That's my problem! Tell me, you deballed wonder!"
"PISS ON IT!" Black screamed furiously. And died.
There went his last hope! Black's eleventh-hour help had pulled him through before, but there was no chance of that now. "Piss on it!" Prior echoed with mixed sorrow and rage. Why had he driven Black into such anger as the man lay dying? His thoughtlessness had cost them both their penises and their lives!
Piss on it....
Inspiration! Would it work?
He resumed pumping, pretending that there was still fire in his phallus. "I'm getting near the climax, you demonic cherry whore," he told her. "You're a corpse, but you can't cool my organ. Not deep down to the source of semen. It's sort of fun, fucking frigidity; a novelty, sets me off. You can't shrink me before I spurt. Feel that hot burble starting?"
"No," she said uncertainly.
He jogged his dead member, hoping it was more rigid than it seemed, and not because of getting frozen. "What an orgasm! It's raging in my gut! I can't hold it back any longer, much as I enjoy playing with you! You're quite a lay, know that?"
"You're quite a bluffer, know that?"
"Ooooh!" he cried, twisting his face in simulated rapture. "Ah, crocodile-cunt, I've never had one like this! Aaaaah!" And he panted and tensed his whole cold body as though torn by the spasm.
She changed into a giant, slimy, wriggling worm. But his member was wedged in the thing's cloaca, and he continued his act. "I'm coming! I'm coming! Swing low, sweet chariot! Feel that hot liquid!"
And he compressed his belly and urinated forcefully into her quivering vagina as she changed back into a woman.
"A-a-a-a-ah!" she screamed in climactic agony. She began to dissolve into chilly vapor.
Suddenly her misty eyes opened. "You unmitigated fucker!" she snarled, metamorphosing into the tiger. Her hole clenched airily. "That's not ejaculate!"