"hag", who leaves him with seemingly fatal injuries. His body falls into the water, and he soon learns that he is not succumbing to the injuries and that the sun burns his skin: the hag was a vampire, and now so is he. Cassidy begins to wear sunglasses to hide his eyes, which are now blood red as part of his transformation into a vampire. Not wanting to explain himself to his family or comrades, Cassidy decides to travel to the United States, living there in squalor for almost a century, figuring out how to subsist on alcohol and drugs instead of blood, but inadvertently making him parasitical and irresponsible with a remarkable lack of forethought, causing harm and death to those around him when he abandons them to circumstances he set in motion, leading many former partners off his to end up critically injured, hopelessly addicted to drugs, or dead. After he gets the girlfriend of a friend of his killed during the "Dixie Fried" story arc, Xavier, who is a Voodoo priest says "I honestly don't believe he's an evil man. Just careless. And thoughtless. And terribly, terribly weak." In Preacher, while hitchhiking to Dallas, intending to found a bar there called "The Grassy Knoll" while on the run from Les Enfants du Sang, Cassidy is picked up by Tulip O'Hare, and meets the preacher Jesse Custer; after saving them from a confrontation, he elects to join them on their mission to find the actual (missing) biblical God. Over the course of their adventures, Cassidy forms a strong friendship with Jesse and eventually falls in love with Tulip, though she initially does not reciprocate the feelings. After Jesse forces Cassidy to drop him from a plane using the Word of God, in order too save Cassidy and Tulip, he also orders Cassidy to confess his love to Tulip, and the two begin a relationship, taking up heavy drugs and alcohol together while mourning Jesse, before eventually breaking up. After Jesse returns and reunites with Tulip, he vows to kill Cassidy on learning of her addiction, although Tulip asks him not to. Reuniting with Jesse, Cassidy is told that Jesse no longer wants anything to do with him, though the two agree to meet one more time for a final duel, engaging in a fist fight that Jesse's skills easily allows him to dominate, while constantly berating Cassidy. When