AN: I just started watching Preacher, and I came up with this idea in the week between episodes 9 and 10 of season 2 of Preacher, so much of this is completely opposite of what's happening in the show currently. I also do not read the comics, so I can't say that I'll be using any source material there. I just love Cassidy and wanted to put a little steamy fic out into the world for other folks who want to see more fics of their favorite foul mouthed vampire and an OC.

Jesse Custer sat across from the man with the cloudy eye and the permanent look of disinterest, not completely comprehending what he had heard. His heart raced. Everything in his body told him to run, to get back to the apartment to collect Tulip, Cassidy, and hell, even Denis, and get the hell out of New Orleans.

The organization that tried to kill him and his friends now wanted to work with him. The conditional ceasefire presented to Jesse was one he was not sure he was willing to accept. Not when the asking price was so damn high.

"So," Jesse said, pouring himself another generous three fingers of the whisky in front of him, "to get the straight… You were implying that your organization works with heaven?"

The serious man spoke obligingly. "Hand in glove, for two millennia."

Jesse ran his hand over the stubble forming on his face, and nodded in disbelief.

"Then you can tell me—where is god?," Jesse asked, unconvinced this man could give him answers.

"I don't know," Herr Starr said. "What I do know is that we can help you. We have resources. So," he said, indicating the two large three ring binders in front of them, "if you'll take a look here, we have many holdings—"

Wham! Jesse cracked the folder against the man's head, sending him down onto the bar room floor. Jesse knelt down over him.

"I said," Jesse repeated, using Genesis, "where's god?"

The serious man said calmly, "I don't know." He paused a moment. "Your power is inspiring."

Jesse looked down on him still, "Then tell me why I shouldn't inspire it to ram this down your throat."

"Because… Preacher Custer, you need me," Her Starr smiled. He helped himself off the floor gingerly.

"What you're asking me to do is a sin," Jesse said, his eyes ablaze. "How do I even know these people are who you say they are?"

"Preacher Custer," Herr Starr responded, growing more impatient. "My organization has been tracking this family for centuries. We think we would know if they were not who they claimed they were not."

"If your organization is as powerful as you say, why haven't you brought them in and killed them yourself?"

Herr Starr seemed a bit proud of himself at that. "Oh, I assure you, we have killed plenty of the descendants. They threaten the very foundation of Christianity, the assumption that Jesus fathered no children. But we have not found them all. Finding one takes years of work. Their network runs deep underground." The cracks in his pride showed at this little inconvenient truth.

"So you need Genesis to find the rest of them," Jesse said.

"Yes."

"What's to stop me from using Genesis on you right now to stop you from coming after me and my friends ever again?" Jesse asked, but he knew the truth. He knew that killing one would not ensure their safety, nor would using Genesis ensure their safety. Herr Starr would be replaced within minutes with another zealot.

"Preacher Custer," Herr Starr said, finally finishing his whisky, and dabbing his bloody nose with his handkerchief. "You know that unless you do this, my organization will keep coming after you. And I know that if I don't give you this reprieve from our attacks, there is mutually assured destruction. Find the descendants of Christ. Kill them, and god will show himself to you. And I get to ensure the goals of my organization are met."

He stood, buttoning his white blazer. "We will give you two weeks. If in that time you do not complete your task, our attacks will resume, and you can rest assured that your friends and you will not live to see two weeks and a day."

At that, he turned and left Jesse Custer on his bar stool to brood over the decision he had to make.

The one-hundred-and-nineteen year old vampire had no idea what he had bargained for when he had turned his elderly son immortal. He had never raised a child before (true, he had no idea how many he even had, but that was beside the point). He had skipped the rebellious teenage phase of Denis's life. And it would seem that now was his opportunity to make up for it.

Through the limited means available to him, Proinsias Cassidy had attempted to communicate to Denis that he was not to drink blood unless he needed to heal. And especially not human blood, unless the donor was willing or deserved a bloody end.

So when Denis had killed one of the armed soldiers without warning, taking away their chances of questioning him, Cassidy had to press the point home.

"Denis, you gotta make sure yeh don't just kill folks for the fun of it," Cassidy said, abandoning the use of his smart phone translator. Denis only rolled his eyes, and continued to dance to Edith Piaf records.

Fed up with his attempts, Cassidy grumbled and shut the door to Denis's room with a resounding thud.

Cassidy opened a recently cleaned and blood-free kitchen cabinet, and grabbed a bottle of cheap Ratwater whisky, uncorking the top and drinking straight from the bottle.

"That bad, huh?" Tulip asked from her seated position at the kitchen table, her feet up on the table.

"I didn't know parentin' could be dis hard," Cassidy said, sitting across from Tulip.

"This ain't parenting, Cassidy. What you did to Denis, that's… he's a grown man, so he'll do what ever he wants."

"I know," Cassidy said, clutching the bottle to his chest. "But when I was turned it was different. I had me whole family to…" Cassidy swallowed, not wanting to reveal too much to Tulip, lest he expose his own sad past. "I just don't want him hurtin' no one doesn't need hurtin'."

"And if he does?" Tulip asked, her eyes growing wide. "Could you put a stop to it?"

Cassidy was silent a moment. Could he take away the curse he'd given Denis, and kill him to save innocent people? If it came to it, he could. He drank generously from the bottle.

"I don't tink it would come to dat," he said, resolutely.

"Let's hope not," Tulip said, warningly. She opened her mouth to speak, but was cut short by the apartment door opening abruptly.

Jesse rushed in, his eyes wild.

"We gotta go," Jesse said.

Tulip and Cassidy stared a moment.

"Wot d'yeh mean, 'we've got to go', padre?" Cassidy asked.

"I know how to find god," Jesse said, impatiently.

Tulip perked up. "You serious?"

"Yep. We have two weeks to do it. So let's go."

"Listen, Jesse," Cassidy said, setting his Ratwater down and standing in front of his best friend. "I got Denis to look after. I can't just go off—he's still learnin' how to, yeh know… be wot he is."

"Well, then Cass, we'll see you in two weeks."

"Alright! Alright, just a minute there boyo," Cass said, incredulously. "I'm not leavin' me best two mates to go off on their own for two weeks with naught but Genesis between 'em for protection. The least yeh could do is tell us wot the hell is going on, 'fore we leave Denis here to fend for 'imself."

"I can't explain right now, Cassidy, we've gotta go. You've just gotta trust me, alright?" Jesse stood with his hands on his hips, looking back and forth between Tulip and Cassidy.

Tulip sighed. "So long as you explain what the hell is goin' on, I'm in."

Jesse nodded. "Alright. We leave in an hour. Do what you've gotta do to be ready by then."

Jesse stomped off into one of the other rooms, leaving Tulip and Cassidy to hastily get themselves in line before departing. Cassidy, of course, for a moment, felt conflicted. Denis was a young vampire, and seemed so impulsive. He really should stay and guide him through the first few lessons of vampirism.

With a passing Google-Translated paragraph, Cassidy gave Denis the riot act, and hoped it would be enough to keep him safe for the next two weeks.

Nina Novak snapped the nitrile gloves off her hands in frustration. Her scrubs were bloodied from surgery. It was a young boy, no more than sixteen by Nina's estimation, who had been brought in for multiple gunshot wounds to the abdomen. It wasn't uncommon for her in Chicago to see this kind of thing. Gang violence had been on the rise recently, and inexplicably.

Nina was a gifted trauma surgeon, but some cases went beyond saving. When her father had asked her why she didn't just become a specialist, she merely shrugged him off. She felt she could do the most good in the emergency room. Days like today, however, made her question her decision to stay.

There were no next of kin at the hospital—the boy was still unidentified. That job would fall to the police, so Nina was spared the task of telling next of kin. She hated that part worst of all.

She shucked her scrubs off in the locker room, and tossed them into the bin to be taken to the laundry. Having stayed well past her shift in surgery, Nina was on her thirty-sixth hour without sleep. She felt she could barely keep her eyes open as she pulled on her athletic leggings and baggy sweatshirt, but was drawn from her daze when her cell phone rang.

With a sigh, Nina picked it up from the bench and saw that it was her father. Nina never ignored phone calls from her father, Goran Novak, but even still, she begrudgingly answered.

"Bok tata," she said in their shared native Croatian, the exhaustion in her voice clear. "What's going on?"

Goran's heavily accented voice met her on the other end. "I need to speak with you, draga. It's very important."

Nina perked up immediately. Despite her exhaustion, her father never called her under duress. She had never even seen her father lose his cool in all her twenty-nine years of life.

"Tata, is everything alright?"

"I'm fine, Nina. But I need you to come home. I will explain everything when you are here."

"Ok, tata, I'll be over soon," Nina said, and ended the call. Grabbing her duffel bag, Nina rushed out of the hospital and to the closest train stop, where she would take the blue line to her apartment, and drive from there to her father's house. The drive was an hour from Nina's. Nina knew it wasn't safe to drive on this little sleep, but she could do no better than a Redbull and some cold water splashed on her face as she traversed the empty streets of Chicago at two o'clock in the morning.

"Please," Goran pleaded. "Leave her out of this. I have kept her from Grail this long."

The three strangers in Goran Novak's home had not threatened Goran's life. They had not hurt him. But one of them possessed a power that Goran knew could not be defeated. He had the power of Genesis. He had read of it—all of the Order had. In protecting the descendants of Jesus, Order members had to essentially become religious scholars.

It was fitting then that the Order placed him in his post as a religious studies professor at Northwestern University.

Tulip sat quietly on the couch next to the older man. Cassidy leaned sullenly against the doorframe in the living room, his arms crossed. He and Tulip had faithfully followed their friend to Chicago, but what Jesse told them to get them there seemed to be crumbling to pieces.

He said he just wanted to talk to someone who might have a lead on where god was. This felt more like holding an old man hostage.

Jesse briefly made eye contact with Cassidy, who looked away in displeasure.

"Please, my daughter doesn't know. She can't know. It's what's keeping her safe."

Jesse's patience grew thin. He had used Genesis more liberally than he should, he knew, but there was no way for them to wait for the girl to arrive than to use it.

"Don't talk until she gets here."

Cassidy huffed, and mumbled to himself. He turned to leave, and when Jesse asked where he was going, Cassidy spat back, "to smoke, unless you've a problem wit dat."

He didn't wait to find out.

He sat on the front stoop of the small, suburban house, and lit a cigarette in near darkness. After finishing each one, he would stub it out and light another. Before too long, he had almost finished his pack, when suddenly a black sedan sped down the empty neighborhood street, and screeched to a halt in front of the house.

Cassidy stood on ceremony, and waited for the woman in leggings and a sweatshirt almost run up to him, her long, dark hair in a messy braid that went almost to her waist.

"Who're you?" the young woman asked. "What's going on? Is my father alright?"

Cassidy threw his arms up in a calming gesture. "He's alright, he's just inside there," he said, and stepped aside before he was knocked over by the frantic girl. She threw open the door, not bothering to close it behind her.

"Tata?" she called, looking in each room as she made her way to the living room in the back. When she reached the living room, she saw two more strangers, and her father, sitting on the sofa and loveseats.

"Tata, sto se dogada?" Nina asked, looking at the man dressed as a preacher, and the woman in a dress and leather jacket.

"It's alright, Nina," Goran said, finally able to speak. He stood, and approached his daughter, hugging her. "We have… much to talk about."

When they separated, Nina turned on the man in black, her green eyes ablaze with anger.

"What is going on?" She demanded. "Someone needs to explain this."

"Sit down, and be calm," Jesse said, using the word.

Nina laughed. "Until you tell me who the fuck you are, I'm not doing any such thing."

Jesse was speechless a moment. Genesis didn't work on her. He would have to resort to actually convincing this girl.

"It's a lot to explain, but you have to come with us. Your father has some things he needs to tell you."

"Please," Goran pleaded again. "For the love of god, please don't make me tell her."

"Too late for that, Mister Novak. Tell your daughter who she is."

"You're the descendant of Jesus Christ himself."

The words hung in the air, and Nina looked around at the strangers in the room—including the one from outside, who'd silently made his way back into the living room. Her eyes widened.

"Ok, maybe it's because I'm on my thirty-seventh hour without sleep, or maybe it's that it spent three hours in surgery, or suddenly Redbull laces its drinks with shrooms… but, what?"

Goran hung his head and sunk back down into the couch, leaving Nina standing. His hair had been black Nina's whole life, but only recently was he starting to show grey hairs. Now though, he looked ten years older than she knew he was.

"I'm a part of an organization tasked with keeping the descendants of Jesus Christ safe from the Grail organization. They were the Knights Templar at one time."

Nina searched her father's eyes for evidence of a lie, but she could find none. She saw, as he wept silent tears, that her father was telling the truth. She'd only seen him cry once before—when her mother had died.

Nina held her hand up slightly. "Assuming… I believe this," she looked at the preacher in black, "why does this mean that I have to come with you?"

Jesse's jaw flexed. "I told Grail that I would kill you, if they left my friends and me alone."

Nina's heartbeat quickened, and she backed up involuntarily. When she collided with a solid figure behind her, she gave a small cry. The tall, scraggly looking man behind her placed his hands on her arms to steady her.

"What the fok are you on about, padre?" Cassidy said. "Tulip and I agreed to come, helpin' you find god and all, but I didn't sign up for killin' innocent girls."

"I told Grail I would kill her," Jesse said, very nearly on the verge of using Genesis on his best friend. "And the second they find out I'm not going to do that, they'll be after all of us."

Tulip sighed and rubbed at her face.

Nina shook her head. "That's it," she said, reaching into her pocket, pulling out her phone. "I'm calling the police, and you're going to leave my father and me alone."

"Now there, love," Cassidy said, plucking the phone from Nina's grasp, and holding it away from her. "Jus' here the preacher man out. Les' not bring the police inta this jus' yet."

Nina bristled, and turned to her father, sitting beside him.

"Dad, I don't understand any of this," Nina said, grabbing her father's hands. He grasped them a moment, and brought one up to her face.

"Nina, I have wanted to tell you your whole life. The Order placed me with your mother, to protect the two of you. She wanted to tell you too. She would have, but… The Order got her too soon."

"Tata, what are you talking about?" Nina asked. She wasn't sure if it was her exhaustion, or the absurdity of what was happening, but she understood nothing. "Mom died in Croatia, in the war. That's when we came here. No organization killed her, Tata, it was soldiers."

Goran shook his head, his icy blue eyes shining with tears. "No, Nina. It was Grail. We left during the War for Independence, but our war was a different war entirely."

"Not that this isn't a very touching and intimate moment," Jesse said, impatiently standing, "but we are going to need to get your daughter out of here before Grail realizes I don't plan on killing the descendants of Christ."

"Descendant," Goran said soberly.

"What?" Jesse asked, scrunching his face.

"Singular. She is the last," he said. Nina's father rose, and went to the book shelf on the far end of the living room, and began pulling books off the shelf. When he had finished moving the books, he opened a compartment in the back of the shelf, and removed a small wooden box.

He stood before Nina, seated still on the couch, and put the box in her hands.

"Everything is explained here. If what this man says is true, then Grail is close. You will need to leave with them."

"'Leave with these people,' dad, this is crazy!"

Goran opened his mouth to speak, but was drawn from his train of thought when a red laser dot appeared on Nina's chest. At a second's thought, Goran threw himself in front of Nina, pushing her down on the couch, and Nina heard the sound of glass shattering.

A cacophony of sound reached Nina's ears: shouts from the three nameless guests, more gunfire from outside, peppering the wallpaper above with bullet holes. Goran slumped over, and fell to the ground in front of the couch.

"Dad?" Nina shouted, looking at her father who stared at the scene unfolding before them. Nina saw the blood, and reacted instinctually.

Goran looked down at his chest, and saw the red puddle that had begun to form. Nina pressed her hands to Goran's chest to try to stop the bleeding. She saw gunshot wounds so frequently, she knew it should feel like any other day, but with her father's face growing paler by the second, she felt she may go into shock any moment.

Nina kept shouting for her father to keep his eyes open, but Goran smiled sleepily and raised a bloodied hand to his daughter's porcelain face, marking it crimson.

"Volim te, draga," he said, over and over.

"No, no, god! Someone call an ambulance, I can't stop the bleeding. He's going to bleed out if we don't get him to a hospital," Nina shouted, unaware that tears were falling down her face.

Nina saw the woman firing a gun of her own out the window, and saw the preacher open the door angrily, exiting abruptly.

"Stop!" she heard him shout with his booming voice from outside. Still, the barrage continued.

The tall, lanky man with the Irish accent knelt down to where she and her father were, and shouted into her ear. "Don't go anywhere," he said, and left through the back door.

Nina couldn't believe that he just left her like that, left her father to bleed out. Looking back at her father, who was very close to losing consciousness, she immediately snapped to attention, and scrambled for her phone, which should have been in a side pocket on her leggings. It was gone. With a pang in her stomach, she recalled that the Irishman had taken it.

"Nina," her father's voice called when the barrage of gunfire had finally ceased. Nina looked back at her father. "Nina, the box. Take the box."

"Tata, I'm not leaving you," she said through her tears. He smiled once more, and closed his eyes. "Tata," Nina called, shaking her father.

He was unresponsive. Nina felt for a pulse at his neck, but found none. Before Nina could react, she felt hands on her arms, pulling her back.

"Time to go, love," the Irishman said, pulling her to her feet. Nina resisted, and as soon as he let her go to grab the small, wooden box her father had given her, Nina went back to her knees to try to resuscitate her father.

"No," she said fiercely, looking up at the Irishman, who had blood running down his mouth and the front of his shirt. Had she not just watched her father die, she might have been concerned for him as well.

"There's no savin' 'im, darlin'," he said, and pulled her easily up to her feet. He wrapped his arm around her waist as she began to struggle.

"No!" she shouted, sobbing and clawing at the arm around her waist. He was walking her towards the front door, and no matter how hard she resisted, he was still stronger. So much stronger.

"I know, love," he said gently into her ear, as they reached the outside. Nina saw two bodies on the floor—a man and a woman—and the woman and the preacher looking down at their faces.

"That fuckin' bitch!" Tulip said, looking down at the woman whose throat had been gored. "She was Grail! This whole time, that lyin' bitch!"

"Wait, you know her?" the preacher said, looking at the woman he too recognized as a lounge singer.

"Do we want to have this conversation elsewhere, padre?" Cassidy asked, still holding Nina, who was very close to collapse.

"The tires on the Chevelle are shot out," Tulip said.

Jesse looked at Nina, who he knew was very close to not being able to talk with anyone, and since Genesis didn't seem to work on her, he shook her shoulders. "Hey! We gotta use your car. Where's the keys?"

Nina began to shake, despite the man holding her waist. "Ignition," she managed to say. Without a word, the preacher and the woman emptied the beat up old muscle car with the tires shot out, throwing what bags they had into the trunk of Nina's sensible black sedan. When that had been done, the woman got behind the wheel of the car, and the preacher in the passenger side.

The Irishman opened the back door, and gently led Nina in, sliding in beside her. They sped away, taking turns so fast that Nina kept being tilted into the man beside her. When they reached the overpass to get onto the freeway, they slowed to a legal pace, and drove for a time in silence.

The driver and the front passenger spoke to themselves, but Nina couldn't register anything that they were saying. She knew she was most likely going into shock. When she finally let herself cry, she lay her head in her hands, and wept quietly. She flinched when she felt a hand on her back, and looking sideways at the Irishman with blood all over his face, Nina broke.

She didn't have it in her to be angry at him for taking her away from her dying father. She was a surgeon, and knew she couldn't have saved him even if he was brought to the hospital. Her exhaustion, coupled with her grief, caused her face to contort in silent sorrow. Cassidy knit his eyebrows in sympathy, and moved his hand further down her back, onto her other shoulder.

Nina let herself be pulled into his arms. She didn't know these people. She barely recalled all that she had learned that night. But there, in the arms of a stranger, she let herself cry, and fell asleep almost instantly.