01_-_The_Alchemyst

hearts do not beat, they have no need to eat, so the blood provides no
sustenance for them.”
“Are you dead?” Sophie asked the question Josh was just about to ask.
“No, not really.”
Josh looked into the mirrors, but he could clearly see Scathach’s
reflection in the glass. She caught him looking and smiled. “Don’t believe
that old rubbish about vampires not casting a reflection: of course we do; we
are solid, after all.”
Josh watched intently as Scathach pressed her fingers to his sister’s.
Nothing seemed to be happening. Then he caught a sparkle of silver in a
mirror behind Scatty and he realized that in the glass, Sophie’s hand had
begun to glow with a pale silver light.
“My race, the Clan Vampire,” Scatty continued very softly, staring at
Sophie’s palm, “were of the Next Generation.”
In the mirror Josh saw that the silver light had begun to pool in Sophie’s
palm.
“We were not Elders. All of us who were born after the fall of Danu
Talis were completely unlike our parents; we were different in
incomprehensible ways.”
“You’ve mentioned Danu Talis before,” Sophie murmured sleepily.
“What is it, a place?” There was a warm, soothing feeling flowing up her
arm, not unlike pins and needles, but tingling and pleasant.
“It was the center of the world in the Elder Times. The Elder Race ruled
this planet from an island continent known as Danu Talis. It stretched from
what is now the coast of Africa to the shores of North America and into the
Gulf of Mexico.”
“I’ve never heard of Danu Talis,” Sophie whispered.
“Yes, you have,” Scathach said. “The Celts called it the De Danann Isle;
this modern world knows it as Atlantis.”