We Who Hunt Alexanders

Jason Sanford is an award-winning science fiction and fantasy writer who’s also a passionate advocate for fellow authors, creators, and fans, in particular through reporting in his Genre Grapevine column (for which he's been a finalist multiple times for the Hugo Award for Best Fan Writer). He’s also published dozens of stories in magazines such as Asimov’s Science Fiction, Apex Magazine, Interzone, and Beneath Ceaseless Skies along with appearances in various “year’s best” anthologies and The New Voices of Science Fiction. His first novel Plague Birds was a finalist for both the 2022 Nebula Award and the 2022 Philip K. Dick Award. Born and raised in the American South, Jason’s previous experience includes work as an archaeologist, journalist and a Peace Corps Volunteer. His website is www.jasonsanford.com.

I killed my first Alexander at seventeen. That was also the age I fell in love, an emotion supposedly beyond my kind.

We rippers make our homes in the love of others. We kill the people who’ve so forsaken love they’ve burned away their souls. But actually experiencing the warmth of that strange emotion was something none of us dared achieve.

Until I was born. I guess Momma was right when she said I’m the strangest of monsters.

But before the love came the kill, which happened a few hours after we arrived in the city of Medea. Momma and I stumbled down the dark cobblestone streets during a howling blizzard, only occasional gaslights slashing open the night.

I hoped if anyone saw me and Momma they’d mistake us for a human woman and her teenage daughter. I also prayed — a word that would have angered Momma if she’d heard me utter it — that we wouldn’t run into any of the church zealots who’d chased us from our last home.

As we passed the large tenements along the train tracks I saw the white cross of the Vita Dei painted above many of the doorways. I’d tasted the overwhelming anger of Alexanders here and there as we’d fled our old home, their fury always burning into me as if I’d held my hand over a tea kettle’s steam. But the city’s brownstones, mansions and tenements – especially those marked with white crosses – contained far more Alexanders than I’d ever dreamed existed.

“Be careful,” Momma whispered. “There are some powerful Alexanders in this city.”

I understood. You had to be careful around Alexanders. They could easily kill rippers when they outnumbered us.

“Let’s go back to the countryside,” I said, already hating this dirty, cold city. I shivered, nearly frozen despite the stolen coat I wore.

“Too dangerous,” Momma said. “Easier for the church to track our kills in the countryside.”

We turned down an alley and sheltered in an alcove between two buildings, directly across from a seedy pub. Next door to the pub was a horsecar stable, metal rails running from the building down the cobblestone street. The horses inside nickered. I smelled manure, stale hay, sour alcohol and human sweat along with other sickly scents I didn’t recognize.

“This is a good spot,” Momma said. “Nasty, dark places late at night are good hunting. Remember that.”

I nodded as I huddled closer to Momma, trying to stay warm. I was careful not to embrace her. I didn’t need another lecture about how rippers shouldn’t hug one another.

The door to the pub opened and a drunk man stepped out. I prayed he was an Alexander. But I didn’t scent violence on him and our magic prevented us from harming anyone who wasn’t an Alexander. The man looked right through our bodies without seeing us before staggering toward home. 

This was my first time joining Momma on a hunt and despite being so cold I watched with curiosity the men leaving the bar. Not all Alexanders were men, but the vast majority were. Momma blamed society for that. She said too many men these days were given more opportunities to be violent, something the church zealots encouraged.

I’d always wondered at what point a violent, angry person lost their humanity and became an Alexander. Momma had never given me a clear answer, not even telling me why we called them Alexanders. But she did mention once that just as there were rules that governed the magic powering our lives, so too were there rules for Alexanders. Once a person bent the world too far through hate and anger and violence, all that remained for them was us.

I tasted each man leaving the bar. The men walked by themselves or in groups, some laughing and singing, some cursing or even silent. But none were Alexanders. My stomach growled and I leaned closer to Momma’s warm body.

That’s when an Alexander slammed open the pub door. He was angry and left a bitter, metallic tang of pending violence on my tongue. He walked purposely down the alley toward the shophouses facing the harbor. The evil buzzing where his soul once lived called to me, sending an excited, instinctual shiver through my body.

“Stay quiet,” Momma whispered as we snuck after the man. While most people couldn’t see us at night, Alexanders could. Especially when they aimed to hurt someone.

We followed him down the hill and along the street. The man staggered past rows of stone piers and wooden docks. Hundreds of sailing ships and fishing trawlers were tied up alongside the docks and bobbed in the waves. The man glanced back once, as if sensing us, but we hid in the blowing snow. He cursed and continued walking. 

Momma’s claws emerged from her fingers and she spun them around, trying to conjure a blood-maw – a portal into the inner world all rippers drew our power from. But Momma was too weak to create a blood-maw and I’d never been able to. She glanced at me and I knew we’d have to do this the hard, messy way.

The man stopped before the ground floor of a brick shophouse, the words DRY GOODS painted in gold letters on a green-stained wooden sign above the front door. But the sign’s paint was faded and flaking and the store’s picture window cracked, as if the building had given up caring what the world thought of it.

The man tried to open the front door but it didn’t budge. He shook the doorknob in anger. “Unlatch the door, Joanie,” the man yelled. “Abner, don’t make me do this!”
He rattled the door again. Through the dirty window I saw a woman in a faded robe holding a candle and a kitchen knife in the rear of the store. A young man my age stood beside her holding a wooden mallet. Fear and determination etched their eyes and neither approached the door.

“Open it!” the man yelled again. When the people inside didn’t move, the man pulled a billy club from under his coat.

"Sanford has written a wonderfully paradoxical story: horrific yet sweet, subtle yet blunt, rageful yet loving, historical and—unfortunately—all too timely. I came away both disturbed and comforted, and I very much enjoyed it."
—Jim Hines, author of the Magic ex Libris series

"We Who Hunt Alexanders is a fast-paced novella interlaced with mystery, exploring rage, violence, and the abuse of power while unpacking new truths and unravelling the previously known. It is a bloody yet comforting story about learning to love and trust after being taught to harden against the cruelty of the world and the difficulty of solving problems if you can't reach the rotten roots, and only trim its branches."
—Ai Jiang, Nebula and Bram Stoker Award-winning author of Linghun

"By turns dark and deeply touching, We Who Hunt Alexanders is a tightly crafted rumination on fanaticism, monstrousness, and the power of community in a hostile world. With a fascinating new monster, a delightful supporting cast, and some epically bloody comeuppance, this is not one to miss." 
—Samantha Mills, author of The Wings Upon Her Back

"If you could rid the world of evil by eating it—by literally becoming the hell that will torture the blackguards you consume—would you? Jason Sanford's We Who Hunt Alexanders  puts this very moral quandary before us, in a grisly, action-packed tale of murder, loyalty, and more zugzwangs. By testing the human heart under the most unimaginably difficult circumstances, Sanford delivers a frightening, cathartic meditation on just how far we'd go for the ones we love—even when we aren't sure what love even is." 
—Carlos Hernandez, author of Sal and Gabi Fix the Universe

"Jason Sanford ain't playing with y'all anymore. We Who Hunt Alexanders  lives at the intersection of cyberpunk and horror. Edginess and timeliness; blood and desperation; love and terror all woven like a rogue literary DNA strand. Sharp, relentless, achingly beautiful. Like the times we live in, We Who Hunt Alexanders  is a harrowing tale infused with the kind of humanity that refuses to be erased."
—Maurice Broaddus, author of Unfadeable and Pimp My Airship

"Amelia, the protagonist of this remarkable novella by Jason Sanford, is at once adorable and arcane, and her experiences are both deeply relatable and utterly terrifying. What I loved the most was that underneath everything, this is a story of friendship, in all its myriad forms: from the mysterious sisterhood of the rippers to the individual friendships between characters that aren't coaxed into becoming 'something more.' It's also a story about families, both biological and found. Unexpected pockets of tenderness are folded into every scene of this book about ancient man-eating monsters with entirely too many teeth."
—Mimi Mondal, author of His Footsteps, Through Darkness and Light