He knew retaliation was coming and Griffin knew that he hit the nail on the head with his ‘guessing game’, feeling no need to bring it up because he knew he won. Malcolm knew, too, but the stubborn idiotic alpha wolf and his pride wanted to pretend that he still had a winning chip in a game where he’d already folded. Griffin didn’t wince when he was slammed against the wall, his hands coming to clasp Malcolm’s wrist loosely as the insufferable old man continued to yap like he was the apex predator in the room. He wasn’t, but he’d soon find out. A satisfied grin spread on his face even as Mal’s nails broke the skin and caused half-mooned blood droplets to form. It fueled him. “You played yourself, Malcolm,” Griffin said before he started cackling, knowing that the person that had hurt his mother, traumatized the woman who loved him and raised him with kindness, was within his reach… his hands… it set a fire ablaze in him with a murderous rage; space-time continuums be damned. He would end Malcolm here and now, but not before Malcolm regrets every word that he said about his family. The Thornton-Watts were and would always be superior. His hands wrapped tightly around Malcolm’s wrists now, Griff’s skin beginning to super heat as the fires began to lick from underneath his fingertips; smoke poured from his nose and through his grin that turned wicked as he smelled the charring and burning flesh of Mal’s arm under his grip. Griffin knew that he could super heat Malcolm’s blood and be done with it. Cause a spontaneous combustion in the man’s lungs… but no he wanted to play. Pushing the man’s arms off of him, leaving sizeable handprints burnt into the skin, Griffin reared back before flames engulfed his fist– surging forward to deliver a punch into Malcolm’s prior injury from Alec; flames bursting in all directions and cascading to the ground like hot rain as Malcolm flew across the room. No mercy. Griffin stalked after the wolf, anger all-consuming as every inch of visible skin bled away into flames– a trick he learned from comic-book characters when he learned that fire had no impact on him… back when he thought he’d be a hero. He stared down at the pathetic excuse of a man and the anger formed against his parents, too. How could they not take care of this man when they had the chance? Leaving it up to him to clean up the messes. Griffin crouched with a cocked head, seeing the prior wound from Alec bleeding again, reaching forward with a blazed hand and laying it on the open wound. Cauterizing it. “I don’t want you dying from anyone else’s hands but mine,” Griffin seethed, “you get to die knowing that a nothing Thornton-Watt was the one that killed you.” Rearing back again, a powerful wave of flames burst on his already flaming fist– powering up while Griffin stared with malicious glee. “Goodbye, Malcolm,” he said before he sent his fist flying waiting for the impact.
He thought he’d won the battle and would continue until he finally won the war, the death of one witch was no skin from his back and he’s accomplished the impossible before. Malcolm imagined himself tearing Griffin’s throat open, watching the boy choke on his own blood and beg for death before ripping his heart from his chest, it was perhaps a foolish fantasy that bordered along the lines of naïve, but just as Cassie had before her son, Griffin would not perish easily without fighting until his fucking last dying breath. Malcolm’s grip on the male tightened as the pin-sized droplets dotted the back of his hand, although, even the yearning for feeling the sensation of the scarlet liquid drenching every inch of him could have made him harder than even beating the shit out of Mac did once upon a time. Mal witnessed the change in Griffin’s expression, it wasn’t fear or just loathing, it was a look he knew well if he glanced his own reflection in the mirror. Something psychotic and evil lived in this boy, something his family didn’t know existed. Did Ravenna know, as she stood at a great distance watching for the outcome? A peculiar scent suddenly began tickling his nose, the smell of burning that wasn’t from the fireplace. It didn’t occur to him until he glanced downwards did he recognize it accompanied by a slight sting that started to grow. Flesh, his flesh was burning. Malcolm’s gaze slowly lifted, eyeing the flame beginning to envelope the boy’s closed fist. “Shit.” It was the last phrase he was able to flee from his lips before his body was sent hurdling across the room, slamming into the already destroyed wall and collapsing to the floor in a heap. A hand dropped to the scorched gash previously gifted to him by Alec as he contained what little determination he possessed to hold in his groans of pain knowing he wouldn’t reduce himself to a whimpering bitch, catching a small flicker of Ravenna muttering incoherent phrases underneath her breath, her hand raising as if she were in the early stages of a chant, although he did not know whether Griffin noticed. His vision was growing blurry, maybe if he was fortunate enough, he passed out and this would be over. His death, his fate, hanging in the hands of a petulant child way in over his own goddamn head. Malcolm lost the ability to spit insults as he coughed up blood, the gooey tang bleeding from his mouth. “I’m not scared to die, you hear that?” He hissed weakly as Griffin crossed the room to his side, “I will find you, Griffin, no matter where you go, I will find you and I’m going to-” The statement cut short, leaving behind a loud scream from the Alpha as the instantaneous red-hot agony of the cauterization set every nerve in his body on fire. The burning glow emanating from Griff’s fist, the moment of truth, increased the black spots forming in his vision. Ravenna’s louder words rang in his ears with each step she took towards Griffin, whose back was to her. He was finally losing consciousness, waiting for death and wouldn’t even be awake to face it entirely.
Ravenna permitted this horror spectacle last for as infinitely as she did for Griffin’s own internal peace-making for the truth of a man who tormented his mother, but his mother is the reason she had to put a stop to it. Griffin consumed himself in flame, knocking about Malcolm with the malicious intent to kill him. Mal’s timeline was not finished with him yet and his death could ripple terrible reverberations. So, she recited a sleeping spell powerful enough to subdue even the most powerful of creatures before Griffin ever managed to deliver his final blow he was seconds from throwing, watching as the boy dropped. They spent enough time in this past as it was, leaving with none of the answers they journeyed for. Ravenna chose to finally end the time traveling spell, nearly breathing a sigh of relief as their surroundings faded, as Malcolm’s bloodied frame faded, materializing back into her office as if the pair never left. “Damn you, Griffin.” She sighed to herself, gaze floating to the younger witch’s unconscious form. This...was all for nothing.
