The thing they don't tell you about magic is the cost. How much it keeps costing.

In the shadows of the world--a world much like the one you know--hidden in plain sight as much as it's secret, there are creatures: vampires, werewolves, shapeshifters, pucks and pixies. Dragons sleeping in the Rocky Mountains. Witches starting a coven in Bushwick. Elves in the old forests. Selkies in the Pacific Northwest. Like most things, most of them aren't an issue; live and let live. But others? More than you'd like to think? Those aren't so kind to humanity. SHEARWATER doesn't exist. Somewhere in West Texas there's an old government building that looks like it was abandoned sometime in the seventies. Formica desks, beige walls, wooden paneled cabinetry, no sign of a computer. But just past the back doors, down two hallways and after a ride in a rusted elevator, the real work of begins. Shearwater claims to be the one and only line of defense between humanity and the magical creatures that live just under the surface of the world. It claims to be the one agency protecting good American folks trying to live their lives from the forces that would otherwise disrupt it. Agents investigate anything abnormal; murders, rituals, sightings and feedings and their instructions are clear: contain, investigate, eliminate. Dominic 'Dom' Barlowe didn't dream of being a special agent. Dom didn't dream of much, really. He grew up in a close-knit family: mom, dad, little sister Gabriela. She was four years his junior but despite it, they were inseparable. Their childhood wasn't anything extraordinary - suburban home, green lawn, a dog named Marley. Baseball games, school, soccer games, church on Sunday.

And then.

Back home in his final summer before his last year of college, twenty-one year old Dominic took his sister out for a night of very harmless sibling bonding. It wouldn't be long until he was back at school and he couldn't see her anymore - they'd catch a movie, get some dinner, maybe some ice cream after.

Except, of course, they ran into him.

A mage. One who was using dark magic. One who was, Dom would later learn, a necromancer, who didn't take kindly to two kids (they were still kids, no matter how old they might have been) stumbling into the middle of his ritual. If only Dom'd grabbed Gabby's hand; if he'd made them run--

If only the mage had taken Dominic instead.

Gabriella's funeral was the Friday before Dom headed back to school and two months before the agent from Shearwater slipped a business card into the stack of books Dom was checking out about magic from the public library. He joined up a week after graduation, intent on one idea: anything magical didn't deserve to live.

Thirteen years of service. That's how long Dominic Barlowe gave Shearwater - hunting magical things across the damn country. Trapping werewolves, locking up demons, burning down the nest of a cockatrice. Always circling back, looping around, trying to find any mention of him, any sighting, any rumor, any tip chased into the ground.

Thirteen years and nothing.

But, it turned out, Shearwater had more in store for their agents--and Dom was tapped for a mission. Project Hemlock. Objective: 🅲🅻🅰🆂🆂🅸🅵🅸🅴🅳.
Project Hemlock promised to help agents. It would be a revolution in their tactics, a way to strike first, to strike last, to be decisive. There were only four of them chosen: two men, two women. Top agents from the top agency. Dom went in willingly--though he'd argue it wasn't with eyes open. It started with pills: a vitamin supplement given with agents meals. Something to make them stronger, to fight against disease. All above board, gentlemen, nothing different from what they give the men of the armed forces. Next came the injections: shots of something waved off as preventative. Once a week. Every week. Same arm.

And then, three months after the 'project' started, they were introduced to the radiation. Or at least, that's what Dom assumes it was--he doesn't actually know. It may have been gamma rays or some concoction no one's ever heard of, he just knows three months in he was seated in a cell-like room with the three others, strapped to a chair and then lit on fire.

Sort of.

It felt like he was burning alive, like every cell in his body was alight with something catching tinder sparks, racing along his veins and nerves and all of him until it consumed him into unconsciousness.

When he awoke, they told him it was a success. Project Hemlock worked. Shearwater's top four agents able to fight magic with its own weapon: magic itself. They had found a way to take normal human beings and turn them into practitioners. Special Agent Dominic Barlowe was now a witch. Or a mage. Or a wizard--whatever the term: magic thrummed in his veins, wild, and untamed.

Dominic Barlowe had become the thing he swore to eradicate.

He's been on the run from Shearwater almost year now; lying low, trying to blend in to the world of people he's no longer like, trying to find some way to keep the power inside him from spilling out every chance it gets. He's spent his life trying to find his sister's killer and that hunt continues, it's just that now he's doing it as a wanted man.