"The black ages," Black corrected her automatically. "Now you two stand back. I've got an amulet to protect me, but your only safeguard is this diagram. Don't step in it, don't get too close—DON'T DRIP ON IT, BITCH!" he screamed as Klo did get too close. She stepped back hastily and wrapped the towel about her.

Black glared at her a moment more, then resumed. "When I light this—"

"Sure," Prior said, amused. Black magic, indeed! He scratched a wrinkle in his scrotum where some chocolate had lodged itchily.

Black set the candle in the center of the pentagram. It promptly fell over. "So it's like that, eh," he muttered. He lit a wooden match and melted the candle's base so that the wax dripped, then set it down firmly in the puddle. This time it stayed. He used the same match to light the wick. When the candle flame was steady he popped the lighted match into his mouth to extinguish it, stood back beyond the rim of the pentagram, poured some of the powder into his palm, and made a last check to see that Klo and Prior were well clear.

Black chanted:

FEE FOO FII FANCH, I SMELL THE SAP OF A CHERRY BRANCH!

BE YE GREEN OR BE YE BRASS, I'LL GRIND YOUR WOOD TO WIPE MY ASS!

As he chanted, he threw a pinch of powder into the candle flame, taking care not to enter the pentagram himself, and there was a bright flash.

As Prior's sight cleared, he saw within the pentagram a mass of foliage. It was a limb from a tree—and a single bright red cherry showed.

"There it is!" Black grunted, sweating.

"Sure enough," Prior agreed, not knowing what to make of it. It was the spire he required, not the actual branches of the cherry tree, and their removal from the tree wouldn't make it any easier to climb.

"Now will you leave Mt. Icecream?" Black asked.

"Because you tore one branch off a cherry tree by magic?" Prior chuckled, walking toward it. "What kind of a white fool do you take me for?"

"Stay back, idiot!"

Prior ignored him. He stepped into the pentagram and kicked at the lone cherry.

His foot never landed. The greenery metamorphosed into a tremendous demon-shape. A huge gray hand shot out to fasten around Prior's neck.

"So you'll grind my wood to wipe your smelly little pucker, eh?" the demon boomed, blowing sawdust in Prior's face.

Prior was just beginning to comprehend what Black had tried to warn him of. He should have realized that this was no ordinary cherry tree. How could it grow in perpetual snow, otherwise? Now he was in trouble.

"No, no!" he gasped, trying to free his neck from the crushing grip. "All I wanted was to—"

"To take my cherry!" the demon cried. "Well, let's see you try it, sucker! My cherry has never been breached by mortal man, but there's always a first fucking time, right?"

"To get the spire!" Prior finished, beginning to black out.

"To get the spire!" the demon mimicked. "As if you could mount to the divine dildo without first plucking the cherries off the five guardian branches of the Tree! Well, I am the least of those branches, and I have taken the cherries of better mortals than you, fool. I'll wipe your ass, all right—right out from your puny body!"

"Cherries?" Prior was confused, and the hand choking him did not facilitate his clarity of mind.

"Well," said the demon conversationally as he squeezed. "Technically they aren't cherries unless they're ripe and fresh and female, and most aren't, unfortunately." It gave Prior's neck another painful tweak. "But you know what I mean. Unfucked."

Prior finally twisted his neck free, leaving some skin and possibly a vein or two behind, and sucked wind. "No I don't know what you mean. All I came for—"

The demon put a talon in Prior's collar and ripped the shirt lengthwise. "All you came for was to grind my wood. Ha ha. Well, grind, mortal, grind!" It ripped Prior's trousers open, the claw narrowly missing a testicle. "Shit, mortal—not only are you deficient in wit, charm, and personal hygiene, you're missing a copulatory organ! Wait till I tell my siblings about this!"

Prior still didn't quite understand what was going on, but was sure he didn't like it. He was naked now, and of course the demon had never been clothed. And the demon had a fat nine-inch phallus stiffened for business.

Prior tried to pull away and get out of the pentagram, but the demon tripped him and sent him sprawling. Prior tried to roll, and the demon kicked him back. It was, in fact, a game of cat and mouse; the demon couldn't help chuckling every time Prior's chance at escape turned out to be illusory.

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.