Within seconds Jared felt the absence of the cruel and seductive presence of Inanna, but the strange assault on the car continued. Still, he noticed that although Birdy never manages to get back up on the highway, he was driving parallel to it, and to the flow of traffic.
The first thing Jared heard, and really heard, with his doggy ears rather than mostly-human mind, was the distant sound of semitrucks blaring their horns. But there was something else in the sound, that reached down into the space where Jared was neither fully canine nor human.
The horns blared again, closer...
...hunting horns, neighing horses, howling dogs like him, shouting hunters like him, the hunt, the Hunt, the HUNT! The game was afoot! Let him out, he had to run, he had to join the hunt!
Jared didn't even realize he was about to jump from the car until Raphael grabbed his collar and restrained him. But the young man was laughing now, despite the signs of strain.
"Easy there boy! You're a natural for Old One Eye's hunt, but you gotta learn to ride your instincts, not be ridden!"
Now Jared could see it as well as hear, a long line of trucks taking up all three lanes of outbound interstate traffic, trucks of every shape and size, no, more than shipping trucks, he saw motorcycles, and vans of young people with the wind in their hair, even a few convertibles. And at their head...
It looked at first like a completely standard Peterbilt, but with a massive horse painted the length of its trailer. It was a stylized painting, conveying speed over anatomy, not so much a horse as Horse, capital H.
It took Jared a full minute to realize the horse also had eight legs.
Birdy began trying to pull closer to the traffic, still dodging those strange white flashes. Jared's doggy brow knit.
Bark! Bark bark? "Hey! Where are the other cars?"
Raphael pet him absentmindedly, and likewise absentmindedly Jared delighted in the sensation, wagging his tail.
"They've cleared the road. None of them may necessarily believe in anything like The Hunt, but something deep in their blood knows it isn't safe to be on the same road as it. They've all subconsciously taken other routes. It's a tidy bit of magic; don't let him fool you with his behavior, Odin is a surgeon at sorcery, one of the best of us."
Bark? Bark bark? "Odin? Like Anthony Hopkins or like that show on Stars?"
"Ha! Short answer: yes."
Birdy, however, looked a bit worried, and tapped the phone again to redial.
"Odin, we've got troubles."
"Yah, I noticed, Moon Bird good buddy."
"Does everyone have to keep giving me nicknames?" asked Birdy with an eyeroll.
"Weeell, technically, no, but you named your mortal guise Aleister, of all things, and personally I can take somebody tha's named Moon Bird a lot more seriously."
"Bah, focus, you old...look, we can't stop, Ammit's looking for any opening to hit us hard and bust through."
"Yah. Well, looks like there's only one choice."
The lead truck drifted gently into the near lane, closest to the car. Jared saw the door of the cab pop open, hanging invitingly in the air...
...at 75 miles an hour...
"She won't hit me if she knows what's good for her; the boy will just ha' to jump in."