The Touch

Chapter 12 - CWT

The drive in the van was quiet at first. Slade was talking to someone on the phone for about ten minutes. He was relaying to them about what had happened at the school. He mentioned my name and said he was bringing me in to meet everyone.

I still didn't know where we were going and could almost hear Blind Bird in my head giving me caution.

"Where are we going?" I asked Theon.

"We have to check in with the CWT team, so we are heading to their headquarters" he said. "It is not far away, about another ten minutes".

"CWT?" What is that?" I asked.

"Citizens with Touch are what we call ourselves. Although it is obvious we don't have the Touch, we are just the ones making sure that we can save the ones that do. Obviously you are doing the same thing" Theon said as he looked at me in the rear vision mirror.

Tori was silent and I could tell she was listening into Slade's conversation. She really did keep tabs on him, I thought.

Slade got off the phone and looked out the window.

"Not long now" he said.

Suddenly I started getting nervous. It seemed we were heading out of town into the countryside area and I realised that this was probably one of the stupidest moves I had ever made. I didn't know these people and for all I knew they could just be leading me into some kind of trap. I kept an eye on the road ahead and made a mental note of things we had past so that if I needed to I would find my way back.

The van turned left down into what looked like a driveway and we moved over a rough shingle road.

The road was filled with potholes and Theon tried to dodge them all but the van was bumping so much that on one large bump I collided with Slade.

"Sorry" I said as I moved myself back over to my side of the seat and held on tighter to the arm of the seat.

"It's not a problem" he laughed. "We keep it like this so that it doesn't look like it is being used. If we repaired it then someone would notice. I am sure the Watchers would rather not come down this road in their shiny black SUVs".

I muttered my agreance then continued to try and steady myself against the jolts the van was making.

After about twenty minutes I could see an old church coming up on the right hand side and knew that was our destination. The church was a bit weathered by the years and looked as if it could be around 400 years old. It was a beautiful looking building with an earthy brown brick structure with solid walls and windows with archways that looked like they had been carved out of stone. There was a steeple on the top and a large cross sat upon it which was slightly leaning off centre. I could also see a large graveyard to the left of the building with old headstones and a couple of large tomb structures that had seen better days.

"We are going into the tomb on the right" Slade said close to my ear. I almost jumped. "Sorry I didn't mean to scare you" he said.

There was no way that I was going to tell him that the only thing that made me nervous at this point was being too near to him. For some reason he sent shivers through my body when he looked at me. It was a dangerous physical reaction that I didn't want to see played out.

As the van came to a halt Tori opened her door and then came around to open the sliding back door. Slade jumped out and then offered me his hand. I ignored it and jumped down onto the dusty ground.